It’s been over a month since Counter-Strike 2 made its official debut in September 2023. Since the closed beta phase of the shooter, its upgraded engine, enhanced visuals, and advanced gameplay mechanics have managed to capture the interest of FPS enthusiasts worldwide. However, despite these exciting features, there has been a noticeable decline in player numbers over the past month.
According to data from Steam Charts, CS2 has lost about a whopping 184,000 players within the past month, which accounts for roughly 18.92% of the player base. This marks the biggest percentage drop in the game’s player numbers since October 2012.
This isn’t the first time this year that Counter-Strike faced a player drop count. Between June and July, before the release of CS2, CSGO lost about 204,000 players in total, accounting for 18.81 percent of its player base.
The CS2 community is blaming several factors for this drastic drop in the game’s player numbers. Firstly the game has been riddled with bugs since its release, and bugs like the ‘Smooth Criminal Peek’ and weapons falling through the map have disrupted a lot of competitive games during their lifetime. While the devs are generally pretty swift to patch out these bugs, the community is also unhappy with other aspects of the game like 64-tick matchmaking servers and the absence of community servers at the time of its launch.
Lastly, the increased hardware requirements for CS2 has also made the game unplayable for many players with lower-end computers, which can also explain the massive drop in player count since the release of CS2.
Despite losing a significant portion of its players, Counter-Strike 2 still dominates the Steam Charts and is currently the most-played game on Steam, followed by Dota 2. CS2 is undoubtedly one of the most beloved competitive shooters of all time, if not the most, which is why it’s safe to say that the game will almost certainly bounce back as the devs continue to fix the various problems that the title currently suffers from.
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