Counter-Strike 2 Sets New Personal Popularity Record on Steam, and No One Knows Why

Valve’s free-to-play competitive shooter Counter-Strike 2 recently set a new personal popularity record on Steam, although it would seem that nothing foreshadowed this.

Image source: Valve

Let’s remember that since its release in September 2023, the maximum peak online figure for Counter-Strike 2 was, until recently, 1.6 million players, reached last spring.

In December 2024, the figure exceeded 1.740 million, and the day before, on February 16, 2025, 1,744,015 people were recorded in Counter-Strike 2 – a new personal record for the game. The figure can be seen in the unofficial SteamDB service.

As Dexerto noted, there is no credible explanation for the sudden surge in popularity of Counter-Strike 2 on Steam: there have been no major events or big updates recently.

The second season of the Premier Mode started on January 29, and a week has already passed since the end of the IEM Katowice 2025 esports tournament. Dexerto journalists attribute the jump in players to the activity of users and bots on the marketplace.

It is also worth noting that the achieved result was not a record for the shooter. Before its transformation into Counter-Strike 2, the game (then still called Counter-Strike: Global Offensive) attracted 1,818,773 people at the same time.

Counter-Strike 2 has completely replaced CS:GO since its release. The shooter is now based on the Source 2 engine, which Valve says will provide the game with new features and content for years to come.