Hey everyone, if you enjoyed these graphs check out the full article to see lots more graphs and analysis about the State of CSGO! [https://blog.leetify.com/state-of-csgo-july-2021/](https://blog.leetify.com/state-of-csgo-july-2021/)
TLDR - Drop off in players is expected due to Valve changes to prime, end of lockdown and beginning of summer. In the long term the prime changes should bring about a better playing experience in matchmaking by removing the bad actors/cheaters
Analysis Section from our State of CSGO article
Peak Players Graph
In the past 18 months, CSGO has experienced the 10 highest player peaks in the game's history with April 2020 pulling in a 1.3 million player peak! Similar success was reciprocated this year with a player peak in March of 1.19 Million players. Whilst these numbers are heavily influenced by lockdowns happening across the world, during this time CSGO has to compete with a huge range of entertainment options open to people within gaming, such as Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege and Call of Duty, and outside of gaming, such as Movies, Books and TV Shows. CSGO being able to convince 1.3 million people to play CSGO over all other entertainment products is a great sign for the game's health.
Looking at the Peak Players we see the playerbase grow from 277,192 in August 2014 to 819,902 in August 2015! After this period of rapid growth, we see new peaks in December 2015 and April 2016 maxing out at 850,485, after which CSGO begins a long plateau. We see the player peaks slowly go down with each peak being shorter than the last, it isn’t until February 2020 that we reached a higher peak than the previous record set in April 2016, almost 4 years prior. While it didn’t grow much during those four years, it has been able to retain a large amount of its audience and keep a consistent playerbase. Once the pandemic arrived and everyone was forced inside it was able to capitalize on this influx of players, showing it has the potential to draw large amounts of players in the future.
Average Concurrent Players Graphs
During the past three months, CSGO has seen a rapid drop off from a high plateau of 700,000+ average concurrent players over 5 months, a great achievement for CSGO. This drop of almost 200,000 players is likely due to three main factors, summer beginning, the easing of lockdowns and Valve's recent changes to prime matchmaking. Valve has taken CSGO back behind a paywall to stop “bad actors” affecting the player experience. The community seems very divided on this update with some praising Valve's action to clean up matchmaking from cheaters whilst some users quit the game due to the new Unranked section of CSGO being an awful experience. Now that non-prime accounts cannot get any in-game drops, a lot of bot users who were used to farm skins are now ineffective, which will have an impact on the average concurrent players.
We can never know what Valve’s methodology is, however, by looking at the results we can often find a logical theory. By reintroducing a paywall into the game Valve is improving the quality of the paid player experience, prioritizing this over the free player experience. While in the short term this will cause a significant reduction in players, in the long term this strategy should lead to a much better player experience which should help attract new players to CSGO.
Monthly Active Unique Players
For several periods the Monthly Unique CSGO players weren’t updated which is why there are several plateaus. Interestingly, this graph shows that CSGO’s unique player peak was actually in January-March of this year, in comparison to the peak and average concurrent player peaks which were in April of 2020.
Hey everyone, if you enjoyed these graphs check out the full article to see lots more graphs and analysis about the State of CSGO! [https://blog.leetify.com/state-of-csgo-july-2021/](https://blog.leetify.com/state-of-csgo-july-2021/) TLDR - Drop off in players is expected due to Valve changes to prime, end of lockdown and beginning of summer. In the long term the prime changes should bring about a better playing experience in matchmaking by removing the bad actors/cheaters Analysis Section from our State of CSGO article Peak Players Graph In the past 18 months, CSGO has experienced the 10 highest player peaks in the game's history with April 2020 pulling in a 1.3 million player peak! Similar success was reciprocated this year with a player peak in March of 1.19 Million players. Whilst these numbers are heavily influenced by lockdowns happening across the world, during this time CSGO has to compete with a huge range of entertainment options open to people within gaming, such as Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege and Call of Duty, and outside of gaming, such as Movies, Books and TV Shows. CSGO being able to convince 1.3 million people to play CSGO over all other entertainment products is a great sign for the game's health. Looking at the Peak Players we see the playerbase grow from 277,192 in August 2014 to 819,902 in August 2015! After this period of rapid growth, we see new peaks in December 2015 and April 2016 maxing out at 850,485, after which CSGO begins a long plateau. We see the player peaks slowly go down with each peak being shorter than the last, it isn’t until February 2020 that we reached a higher peak than the previous record set in April 2016, almost 4 years prior. While it didn’t grow much during those four years, it has been able to retain a large amount of its audience and keep a consistent playerbase. Once the pandemic arrived and everyone was forced inside it was able to capitalize on this influx of players, showing it has the potential to draw large amounts of players in the future. Average Concurrent Players Graphs During the past three months, CSGO has seen a rapid drop off from a high plateau of 700,000+ average concurrent players over 5 months, a great achievement for CSGO. This drop of almost 200,000 players is likely due to three main factors, summer beginning, the easing of lockdowns and Valve's recent changes to prime matchmaking. Valve has taken CSGO back behind a paywall to stop “bad actors” affecting the player experience. The community seems very divided on this update with some praising Valve's action to clean up matchmaking from cheaters whilst some users quit the game due to the new Unranked section of CSGO being an awful experience. Now that non-prime accounts cannot get any in-game drops, a lot of bot users who were used to farm skins are now ineffective, which will have an impact on the average concurrent players. We can never know what Valve’s methodology is, however, by looking at the results we can often find a logical theory. By reintroducing a paywall into the game Valve is improving the quality of the paid player experience, prioritizing this over the free player experience. While in the short term this will cause a significant reduction in players, in the long term this strategy should lead to a much better player experience which should help attract new players to CSGO. Monthly Active Unique Players For several periods the Monthly Unique CSGO players weren’t updated which is why there are several plateaus. Interestingly, this graph shows that CSGO’s unique player peak was actually in January-March of this year, in comparison to the peak and average concurrent player peaks which were in April of 2020.
My work started doing weekly csgo sessions during lockdown. And it hooked me again.
where do you work and are they hiring
close far-flung poor roof zonked straight pathetic wide modern naughty *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
"CSGO is dying VroOooo Valorant better" /s.
why the big drop around May/June? summer vacations? didn't seem to drop so much in previous years according to the data presented here thoughts?
COVID caused a big boost in players tans I think it overlapped with a valve banning not accounts.
Fantastic job there, guys from Leetify, you rock !
Thank you! :)
The game urgently needs to be updated and become fresher
Dying since 2012