CS:GO surpasses Dota2’s all-time concurrent player peak

The gaming industry continues to boom and while most games be it a multiplayer game or more single-player oriented game titles are experiencing a massive increase in their player base, it's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which came to the fore as one of the most popular games on Steam, breaking the platform's concurrent player base number of over 1.3 million.

Dota2 and CS:GO, as two of the most popular Steam titles have been steadily rising throughout the last couple of months, which is not all too surprising, given that most of the global population is going through a period of social distancing, effectively meaning most of the population is staying at home and entertaining themselves by playing video games.

Although COVID-19 pandemic had detrimental effects on all aspects of our everyday lives, Valve can at least be happy with the increased popularity of their platform and the popularity of their two most popular game titles in Dota2 and CS:GO, with the latter peaking at 1,301,348 players earlier on Friday, April 17, according to Steamcharts.com, which not only marks the new record for Valve's tactical first-person shooter, but also the new all-time record, previously held by Dota2.

Dota2 peaked at 1,291,328 players back in March 2016, but has been on a steady decline since, with thousands upon thousands players leaving the popular MOBA title for other games, which has been steadily maintaining an average of 500,000 players since. Meanwhile, CS:GO has been on the uptrend, which began last November, slowly gaining more players, until last March, when it broke one million players for the first time in the game's history.

But the player base growth did not stop then.

Earlier this Friday, CS:GO amassed 1,301,348 concurrent players, which is officially the highest mark in the franchise history. What's more, CS:GO has maintained 810,328 players over the last 30 days, which is approximately 340,000 more compared to Dota2, which has been averaging 474,456 players over the last month.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began back in December, CS:GO went from 456,701 average players to 810,328 and saw it's peak rise from 767,060 to 1,301,348. Meanwhile, Dota2 saw an equally impressive increase in its player base from 384.179 average players in December to 474,356 last month, with its peak rising from 685,165 to 794,981.

Dota2 is currently close to breaking the 800,000 peak player mark which would mark the first time since August 2019 that Valve's MOBA title would see more than 800,000 players play the game in peak hours.

Although CS:GO and Dota2 take the cake as two of the most popular Steam games, other titles such as PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Grand Theft Auto V are also experiencing impressive player base growth in recent months.

PUBG, as the third-most played game on Steam has peaked at 913,075 players this past month, while averaging 241,862 players. This is also the first time PUBG has peaked at over 900,000 players since March 2019, when it hit 931,407 peak players. Grand Theft Auto V, on the other side reached 243,284 peak players over the past 30 days and 130,210 average players, which is a marginal decline from February's numbers (142,724 average and 267,360 peak).

Another game that has found its place among the top-five Steam games is the newly-released Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord, which is boasting with 144,158 average players and 248,034 peak.

Sitting at sixth place is Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, which saw an average 122,688 players and 198,567 peak players over the last 30 days, which marks the highest average player base in the game's history, continuing the trend of continuous growth, which began in November 2019, when R6S had 66,499 average players and 123.848 players playing the game at its peak.