CS:GO makes way for CS2 — the game’s legacy, most popular events, and watch time dynamics
Counter-Strike is an over two decades old shooter game series with a rich history of esports competition. Originally beginning as a Half-Life mod, the game was bought by Valve and has been developed into multiple different titles over the years. CS:GO was the most recent release of the Counter-Strike franchise, but it has finally been replaced by the all-new Counter-Strike 2 title.
CS:GO was released in 2012 but never stopped receiving development and balancing updates. Maps, guns, and metas have all come and gone as Valve has continued to tweak the formula, but CS2 is an opportunity for Valve to really mix things up. CS2 will bring the Counter-Strike franchise to the Source 2 engine and this new technology has enabled Valve to completely rework smoke grenades, bring new physics and lighting to the series, and experiment with the traditions of Counter-Strike. A fresh coat of paint for CS2 might be what the franchise needs to compete with other new releases in the esports industry for shooters.
CS2 is a new era for the Counter-Strike franchise and Valve’s attempt to modernize and prepare Counter-Strike for a new age of esports competition. Now that we are saying goodbye to CS:GO after over 10 years of history, what were some milestones and highs for this well-known esports discipline?
CS:GO’s legacy
After a decade of esports competitions, ranked games, and competitive gaming history, CS:GO’s story is finally coming to an end. Let’s take a look at the statistics of CS:GO’s history and the overall legacy it will leave behind.
CS:GO has not only been one of the major esports disciplines across the past decade but also one of the biggest games in live-streaming and competitive gaming. Since the launch of CS:GO, 7200 tournaments have been hosted and recorded in the Esports Charts database. Of all of these tournaments, the Counter-Strike industry has hosted over $127M USD in prize pools and the most expensive tournament of all was the PGL Major Stockholm in 2021 with a prize pool of $2M. The heavy investment in this event paid for itself when the event also reached the highest Peak Viewers rating ever recorded for a CS:GO event: 2.75M concurrent viewers.
CS:GO has gone through many changes, from the early days of NiP domination to Fnatic catching up, Brazilian domination, Danish domination, and Ukranian domination. All different kinds of teams and metas have stood at the top of CS:GO, but ultimately Astralis was the most successful team in terms of matches played and profits. The Danish organization founded by the original players received almost $10M in prizes across their many dominant years in CS:GO.
As the discipline evolved from NiP’s 87-0 streak to s1mple winning Player of the Year again and again, the player base grew alongside the competitive scene. In May 2013, CS:GO hit a new Peak Players record of 53.3K players concurrently in-game. As the esports scene blossomed so did the casual and competitive side of CS:GO, and in May 2023, ten years later, the discipline reached a new Peak Players record: 1.8M concurrent gamers enjoying CS:GO.
Of course, CS:GO’s growth would not have been possible without some of the broadcasters who highlighted wonderful CS:GO gameplay for fans to watch on Twitch. ESL and PGL were some of the biggest event organisers of recent years, and their commitment to broadcasting high-quality CS:GO gameplay for fans to watch for free was highly influential to the discipline’s viewership across recent years.
As CS:GO has evolved into a global esports discipline, event organizers and their broadcasters have become more and more important for the game’s viewership, however, community casters are a critical part of the CS:GO ecosystem. Without community casters like Gaules, CS:GO would not be as influential as it is within Portuguese-speaking spheres. Community casters remain a critical part of CS:GO’s growth on the global stage, and they will likely become only more central to the viewership for the title as it evolves to CS2.
Most popular CS:GO events
CS:GO is one of the most popular esports disciplines in the world, and in terms of peak concurrent viewers, CS:GO is the fifth-most popular esports discipline of all time: with a peak of 2.74M concurrent viewers recorded in 2021. It’s outranked by three mobile games, Free Fire, ML:BB, PUBG Mobile, and one PC title, League of Legends. Always key to remember, that these viewership statistics do not include Chinese viewership, as the data from these local Chinese platforms are unreliable.
Mobile game esports like ML:BB and Free Fire are mainly popular outside of Western regions, meaning CS:GO and League of Legends are the two most popular esports disciplines in Western countries, with Dota 2 and Fortnite close behind. As one of the most popular esports disciplines in the world, where did CS:GO achieve its greatest peak concurrent viewers figures?
Unexpectedly, the most popular CS:GO events of all time are all Major events. Majors in CS:GO are prestigious global events that are directly sponsored by Valve, the game’s developers. Valve may add new in-game items to support the event through crowdfunding, directly sponsor the event’s prize pool, or add in-game broadcasting options for players to watch the event from their CS:GO client directly. In the early years of Twitch Drops, Valve would also allow fans the chance to win in-game items and drops by spectating these events, but they stopped with this years ago. Other disciplines in esports have a heavy focus on Twitch Drops to draw in viewership for major esports events, but CS:GO has moved on from this and the viewership garnered for events is purely due to the fans’ love of the game.
The PGL Major Stockholm event in 2021 was the most popular CS:GO event in history for a variety of reasons. Firstly, CS:GO was benefitting from the lockdown boom. As the pandemic set in and lockdowns were enforced around the globe, live-streaming and esports broadcasting experienced a boom in viewership as more and more people discovered the world of live esports events. Also due to the pandemic, the PGL Major Stockholm was the only Major event in 2021. This can be seen in the event’s $2M USD prize pool, which normally Valve would divide between two Major events for $1M USD each. This singular Major event helped unite the true viewership potential of the esports discipline under one event.
Finally, Stockholm 2021 was the first Major that NAVI were able to win in CS:GO. NAVI are a fan-favourite team in the discipline and s1mple is one of the most popular players among fans. The hype and excitement was massive for s1mple and NAVI to win their first Major; viewership rose from 1.4M Peak Viewers in the Semi-Finals by over 1M viewers, and 2.74M Peak Viewers remains the highest ever concurrent viewers figure recorded for CS:GO. The PGL Major Antwerp 2022 benefited from largely the same factors, with the exception of NAVI not being victorious at this tournament.
IEM Rio Major 2022 and ELEAGUE Major 2018 both also enjoyed success due to fan support, but at different points in CS:GO’s history. At the ELEAGUE Major 2018, underdogs Cloud9 managed to become the first-ever North-American CS:GO roster to win a Major event, and on American soil no less. Despite the huge hype behind this Grand-Final match against FaZe Clan, this peak concurrent viewers record was beaten by FURIA and NAVI in 2022.
FURIA, a Brazillian team, and NAVI met in Rio to fight it out in the Quarterfinals of the event, and despite meeting so early in the Playoffs stage, this became the most popular match of the entire event. In 2018, the right teams in the right event were able to draw in 1.32M PV for the Grand Finals, whereas in 2022, the two most popular teams in the esports discipline were able to reach 1.42M PV in the Quarterfinals alone. A large portion of the Peak Viewers figure at the IEM Rio Major was pulled from Portuguese-language broadcasts, just as at the PGL Major Stockholm 2021 Russian was almost the most popular language for broadcasts.
Last but not least, the BLAST.tv Pairs Major became the third-most-popular CS:GO event of all time on the back of the title as the “final CS:GO Major”. Viewers and fans were well aware that the release of CS2 was around the corner, and the final official Major event likely to ever be hosted for CS:GO was highly popular and received huge fan support. To understand the affect of CS2 on CS:GO’s viewership clearly, let’s look at the watch time dynamics for CS:GO in recent times.
CS:GO Watch Time Dynamics
Looking across the years of CS:GO stored in our databases, the viewership for CS:GO does show an uptick for 2021. 2021 was the most successful year for CS:GO in terms of viewership in recent time, and this is clearly seen on a dynamics graph.
According to our viewership data for CS:GO, 2021 saw the discipline record 758M hours of watch time throughout the entire year. 758M HW marked an increase of more than 50M hours compared to 2020, and overall CS:GO had a hugely successful year in terms of viewership. 2020 also performed well compared to 2022, as 2022 marked a drop in watch time for the discipline. It does seem that the pandemic lockdowns had a positive affect on CS:GO viewership, as 2020 and 2022 were two of the most-watched years for the discipline in recent history.
With CS2’s release having arrived in September 2023, this means we are left with only 8 complete months of data for the year, and a partial record of September 2023 up until the 25th of the month. With the incomplete dataset for 2023 taken into account, the viewership for the year seems to have been comparable to 2022, if perhaps a little lower. To understand the dynamics of 2023 and how the tease and release of CS2 affected the viewership for CS:GO, we will have to analyse 2023 on a monthly basis.
When 2023 is taken into isolation, the effect of the CS2 timeline is more pronounced. In March of 2023, Valve began to release teaser videos for the CS2 release and organize exclusive betas for some lucky players to test out the upcoming title. Viewership immediately exploded with more and more people feeling excited about the upcoming changes and from March until May viewership steadily kept rising.
CS:GO’s viewership is naturally affected by the competitive esports scene, and the spike in viewership in May was also assisted by the BLAST.tv Paris Major 2023. This event brought in almost 60M hours of watch time alone, meaning a majority of the watch time for this month was directly received by the Major event of the year.
Viewership fell for the discipline following into June of this year, perhaps due to people being burnt out after the Major or due to the Summer break from esports competition, but this dip was only temporary. Valve used this opportunity to invite more players to the CS2 beta. In August, they began inviting more and more people to the beta, effectively becoming an open beta for all verified CS:GO users by September. Viewership rose as hype built up for the release of the newest Valve title, and 63M hours of watch time were recorded for August 2023.
Now that CS2 is here, CS:GO is officially a part of the past and will only be remembered in our love for esports competition. Viewership for CS:GO reached its peak in 2021, as it did for most esports disciplines following the Lockdown boom in viewership, but 2023’s dynamics showed that players are still interested and able to get excited for Counter-Strike. The new Counter-Strike 2 title will hope to rejuvenate players’ interest in the title and bring some fresh excitement to the old discipline. Keep an eye on the new and evolving CS2 viewership scene with our esports viewership statistics.
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