CSGO player count hits 1 million for 1st time in almost a year

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is enjoying a serious resurgence in recent months, and it has now hit a major milestone once again.

On April 3, 2022, CSGO hit 1 million concurrent players and peaked at 1,013,237 according to Steam Charts. This is the first time the game has hit a seven-figure player count since May 2021. This milestone being reached now may seem random to some, but it isn’t particularly surprising.

Hitting 1 million players comes while there are no in-game events going on. There is no active operation and the 10-year anniversary hasn’t yet arrived. Despite that, CSGO has been consistently bouncing up over 900,000 concurrent players over recent weeks, spiking close to 1 million each weekend.

The game hasn’t been able to peak over 1 million, but has come tantalizingly close on many occasions. It hit over 990,000 in both January and February but topped out at 995,163 during that two-month stretch. While this is technically only a modest gain compared to that time period, clearing the million-player threshold is notable for a few reasons.

This is the first time CSGO has hit 1 million players since the 2021 update that necessitated Prime Status for ranked matchmaking and placed Prime behind a paywall. This led to a precipitous drop in CSGO’s player count in 2021. 

Also notable is the fact that CSGO is hitting these player count highs despite lower average player counts. The last time CSGO hit 1 million concurrent players, it came during a month with a player count average of 659,888.9. The average player count over the last 30 days is 586,164.9 as of this writing.

Is CSGO losing players in 2022?

CSGO’s player count is trending upwards in 2022 after what was a very difficult 2021 for the game.

The decision to gate certain features behind Prime Status was a controversial one that chased off many players. Valve made the move for a number of reasons and it may not have impacted the company’s bottom line, but it was a profound hit for some players.

CSGO still hasn’t come close to recovering from that nosedive in terms of its raw player count. At its peak, CSGO averaged 743,209.7 players in January 2021 players. There’s a long climb back to that number, with the game still averaging between 550,000 and 650,000 on a monthly basis.

There’s now an upward trend there that should cause optimism for everyone around CSGO.