Is CS:GO Actually Dying?
Back in the days, Counter-Strike was one of a kind. There weren't any similar FPS strategy games with a live in-game economy and spray patterns. However, with the release of new titles like PUBG, Fortnite, Overwatch, and the newest one Valorant, CS:GO definitely suffered a severe blow. On the other side, the game is still pretty much popular due to its competitive nature and well-balanced skins market. Even some third-party websites like https://csbet.gg/en allow you to open CS:GO cases and get skins.
CS:GO Majors Viewership Decreasing
A few years ago, the grand final match in every Major was watched by more than 1 million viewers. Nowadays, the highest peak is around 800k. Did the number of viewers actually decreased or is there something else behind it? Well, before Katowice 2019, players were able to receive drops in the form of souvenir packages just by watching any match. It was enough to just turn on your stream and leave it be. If you were lucky enough, you could get drops worth more than $30 (Cobblestone souvenir package). That’s why a lot of players had their streams on even though they weren’t watching. To get the real number of viewers, Valve decided to change the system. Starting with Katowice Major 2019, players can’t get drops while just watching streams. Drops are now received by levelling up event coin. So, we can’t know for sure did the number of viewers actually dropped. It is possible that those old numbers were just bots and AFK players that wanted to get a drop. We have real numbers now it is a steady number, around 400k viewers on average on every Major and 1 million watching the grand finals.
Number of Players
The number of active monthly CS:GO players from 2015 to 2019 values between 500k and 800k for any given month. However, with the unfortunate events that occur in 2020 (COVID-19), CS:GO broke all records and it had 1,3 million active players in April 2020. That number was unrealistic but it still has around 1 million unique players per month. With that said, the number of players actually increased regardless of Valorant’s release.
Valorant’s Impact on CS:GO
CS:GO’s biggest competitor so far is Valorant. It is a similar game produced by Riot Games. First-person shooter game with unique weapon spray patterns and live in-game economy. In other words, Valorant has everything that CS:GO has and even more. This game stole a lot of attention from CS:GO and a lot of players. However, it seems like Valorant players are slowly returning to CS:GO and they didn’t forget about it. Valorant is a competitor but it didn’t hurt this game, it only made it better. Valve now has to work on regular new updates and they are improving the game just because they have to. Valorant is probably the best thing that happened to CS:GO in a long time.
With all that in mind, we can freely say that CS:GO isn’t dying. Just the opposite, this game is still very popular and the number of players will only grow.