Players who like online first-person shooters have had a bit of a boon with the release of a number of new titles, but a classic still reigns supreme. It’s been an interesting last couple of months with the arrival of new online-based combat games, including indie-made ARC Raiders, which has managed some fairly epic-sized player counts. This past weekend, it topped over 418,000 (Sunday nights seemed to be its recurring time to join in), Battlefield 6, which has broken franchise records, and Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. While each game has its own design and identity, be it as an extraction, tactical team-based, or all-out combat, there’s another that manages to pull in more players than all three combined: Counter-Strike 2.
According to the latest counts on SteamDB, Counter-Strike 2 had nearly 1.5 million players join in on the same night as Arc Raiders latest peak, with Battlefield 6 trailing at 244,482 and Call of Duty at 83,568 (Steam includes counts for Black Ops 6, 7, and Warzone). Battlefield 6 and Call of Duty’s numbers could actually be significantly higher, but neither Microsoft nor Sony has released numbers from their platforms.
It’s only been two years since the successor to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released, which offers updated visuals and improved game mechanics with its Source 2 Engine. For whatever reason, 2025 has been a strong year for the fifth entry in the franchise.
For now, it doesn’t look like any slowing down for CS2, although it has begun wrapping things up for this year with the first stage, The Starladd Budapest Major 2025, having begun on November 24. Meanwhile, those looking for online combat elsewhere continue to have new choices with the above titles as they each roll out new content regularly into 2026, so gear up and gather your crew to tackle new maps and rivals.
Discussion (5 replies)
Join Discussion →I mean why would it not? A potato can run that game at 4k 100+hz and give a great experience. Yea new game with the same fidelity wouldn't succeed as well today, but that would be dumb too. Honestly the fact that Counter-Strike started as a community mod to HL2, and slowly became it's own game with great success should be something modders and game makers want to replicate in a big way!
It's not something I play, but my hat's off to them for what they've accomplished.
well if what steam says bout their user base pc,s specs I'm not surprised if their steam box is indeed more powerfull then 70% of their usebase has, chances are that new AAA game won't run that well on them.
I had my share of counterstrike back when it wad still a mod around version 1.4-1.5. It was fun for a bit but not that great to keep palying it for this long.
Honestly many of us older gamers in here... who've been at it for decades building and gaming... we don't make up the standard gamer these days. We want to go into a game, max out every damn setting and just play. Most of us don't care if its SMA, TSA, TMA, or TNA... Ok I care about the last one. But the point stands...
I build my systems so I can go into X game, turn everything on at max, and just focus on enjoying the game.
When I was a young man and didn't have the budget to build big rigs... I spent a lot of time tweaking settings to get them just right so I could enjoy and play the game.
On the same note I put a lot more time into the games I purchased that way.
I'm definitely a part of that group. Sure I want it to be fun but da**it, I started with pong in B&W and at this point I want things to look the best they can be.