Counter-Strike 2 reached an all-time high of 1,824,989 players over the weekend, continuing to lead the pack on Steam’s charts. The new record is 6,216 players above when Counter-Strike 2 made its debut in 2023. While that increase may seem trivial it is happening at a time when a number of free-to-play, or live-service games have ceased development or are in the process of being shut down. Based on the Source 2 engine the latest version of Valve’s free-to-play tactical FPS is the fifth iteration in the franchise’s history following the immensely popular Counter-Stike: Global Offensive.
A rough start for players using AMD Radeon GPUs
While the Source 2 engine was released in 2015, and also used in Dota 2 and Valve’s Half-Life: Alyx VR game, it has continued to receive QoL updates to take advantage of modern PC hardware. However, many PC users know (and sometimes the same can be said for console users), that things don’t always go as planned with updates and CS2 hit a rough patch after its initial September 2023 release. Shortly after it was reported that players using AMD’s Anti-Lag+ latency-reducing technology were getting banned. More than likely this can be attributed to the player count dip seen after the game’s release. By May of 2024, AMD had managed to update Anti-Lag+, claiming up to 95% more latency reduction, and renamed it Ati-Lag 2. AMD worked with Valve to integrate the feature into CS2, versus the previous driver implementation, which solved the problem of player bans.
Since then Valve has regularly updated CS2 and player counts have mostly continued to rise. Despite its uneven beginnings, the latest game has become a testament that free-to-play games can still attract huge amounts of players. Last weekend’s surge brought the franchise to a new record as it edges closer to the 2 million mark and while the numbers have dipped a bit, it’s probably only a matter of time until a new update or added content causes another surge of both new and veteran players.