By now, everyone must have heard of this famous FPS title from Valve. Even though CS:GO is one of the best FPS esports in the world, it has been released for more than 10 years. No one can expect that there will ever be such a spike in the player count of the game, especially when there is no new update for the game or huge event recently.
But it happened anyway and CS:GO has broken its own concurrent player record twice within a short period of time. Earlier, CS:GO reached 876,575 concurrent players, beating its own record since 2016 during the MLG Columbus major tournament. Now, the game quickly beats that record once again with 924,045 players within a few weeks.
It is such an unexpected turn for the game, considering it has always been the "less favorite child" of Valve compared to DOTA 2. More funnily, DOTA 2 players count is actually on the trend of declining to only around 600,000 concurrent players. As a result, CS:GO is now the top 1 game on Steam Chart now after many years.
It seems unlikely, but the reason why CS:GO is becoming famous again might be the outbreak of coronavirus. China is the source of the outbreak and gets affected by it the most. Since people are staying home trying to avoid it, they choose to spend time playing CS:GO, which is now free to play. The coronavirus has affected many industries and gaming is not excluded. The IEM Katowice 2020 has just ended with the victory of Na'vi, but there was hardly any audiences at the stadium to cheer for it because of the fear over coronavirus.