Counter-Strike: Global Offensive set a new player record in February. Never before so many people played the shooter that was released in August 2012. But why is it like this?
On February 9, 2020, a record was broken. 901,305 players simultaneously played the shooter. Thus, the previous record from April 2016 with 850,485 simultaneous players was clearly exceeded.
Why is CS:GO so successful in February? It is not clear why exactly the previous all-time record was broken in February 2020. There was no special patch and no event that could have attracted more attention. However, there are many factors why CS:GO could have such an upward trend in the past few months, including the switch to Free2Play and the lack of alternatives.
Switching to Free2Play
When did the upward trend begin? In December 2018, CS:GO changed the payment model. While you had to buy the shooter before, it’s been free since then and you can buy CS:Go skins. In addition, the “Danger Zone” mode was introduced, a Battle Royale. CS:GO received 14,000 negative reviews for the announcement of the switch to Free2Play, but now this switch seems to have done very well. While only 250,000 to 330,000 players played CS:GO per day on average over the course of many months in 2018, the shooter has not dropped below the 350,000 mark since then.