Unlike DOTA 2, CS:GO has always been considered as the unfavored son of Valve with fewer contents and big tournaments such as the International. The game also wasn't born with a blast like most other titles. CS:GO started out very humbly with a decent amount of players and grew gradually over time. There were times when the game can reach up to 700, 000 concurrent players, but that was it. The game is still doing great but no one can expect a game that is 8 years old suddenly are becoming more popular.

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Because of the coronavirus, and CS:GO is now free, more players are coming to the game

From the start of 2020, CS:GO kept breaking its own record of the number of concurrent players and now the game has reached the 1 million concurrent players mark. It is also having the biggest number of players ever with more than 567 thousand players on average.

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CS:GO has gained its popularity over many years, unlike most other titles

The reason for this surge of players might be the coronavirus pandemic. The free to play model that Valve used for CS:GO seemed to have worked perfectly and now CS:GO is the most popular game on Steam.

While the coronavirus might help the game to have more players, the esports scene is actually suffering with many canceled tournaments. The IEM Katowice Playoffs had to go on without any audience because of the fear of coronavirus. The ESL Pro League Season 11 will be played online instead of being played at a revenue through LAN.

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You can see that the whole stadium only has a few people watch the IEM Katowice Playoffs

Not only CS:GO but Rainbow Six Seige is also enjoying the increase in the number of players in January this year. Meanwhile, PUBG is continuing to have a downward trend.