CSGO is enjoying its best days after being free

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive recently switched to free-to-play and added a battle royale mode at the end of the year, which has caused a sudden increase in the game’s player count.

20,535,709 unique players for @csgo_dev in December, doubling numbers of previous month. This is the biggest number ever recorded for Counter-Strike.

Impressive! pic.twitter.com/0FtWW100OZ

— Nors3 (@Nors3) January 2, 2019

On Twitter, Nor3 said the game reached 20,535,709 players participating in December, double the previous month. On SteamCharts and SteamDB, we can see the average and peak player count. On December 7, CSGO officially freed the game and added a battle royale mode Danger Zone, causing a spike in the number of players.

SteamCharts recorded an average player count of 395,509 in December, with a peak of 746,548. November average player count was only 310,085 and peak was 546,031. However, the new number still doesn’t beat the game’s previous record of over 850,000 players. However, it is still a lot more than the rest of 2018, when CSGO only averaged less than 300,000 players continuously.

A lot of people might be playing CS:GO right now, but they’re certainly not happy with the changes Valve made recently. CS:GO received 14,000 negative reviews on Steam just a day after it went free and the reviews continue to climb. A lot of players are frustrated because they’ve invested in game purchases, only to be compensated by loyalty badges that don’t work.

However, 7,000 positive reviews were also recorded with many optimistic gamers. After a week of free games, the number of negative reviews has begun to outweigh the new negative reviews.

In short, it looks like things have progressed, but a month doesn’t say much. Let’s wait and see what CS: GO will change in the coming time to keep gamers here.