It is always painful to see a game you have come to love more than anything starts to go in decline.
Recently, Counter-Strike 2 witnessed a massive, nearly 19% historic drop in average player count this October 2023. Given that the game was released only a month ago, in September, this comes as a shock to many players.
However, all this didn’t happen out of the blue. There had been signs all along that the developers, quite unfortunately, didn’t take seriously.
But still, this is not to say that the iconic FPS is dead. Discard any claim that says otherwise. If you are a Counter-Strike fan like me, then grab any of the top-ranking CS2 accounts from Eldorado, log into the game, and prove the haters wrong!
That said, let’s now have a quick round-up of the entire situation and conclude why everything is not what it seems.
What Does the CS2 Steam Charts Indicate?
On October 31st, Steam Charts summarized the month’s CS2 activity. It showed an average player count of 792,414 players.
Now, on its own, this figure is impressive. However, if you compare it with the previous month’s average of 976,138 players, this is a historic 18.82% massive drop. In fact, it is the biggest decline thus far in the game’s entire history since 2012!
Now, it would be easy for anyone to say the iconic FPS is in decline. Especially, when the Steam Charts reported yet another but slightly less drop of 18.81% in CS2 average player count a couple of months back in July 2023.
However, there’s more to it than meets the eye.
Counter-Strike 2 Current Issues
No game is perfect; that’s for a fact. When Valve released CS2 in September 2023, it was quite natural for it to have bugs and glitches. However, the moment things started to go wrong was when developers did nothing to address these issues. And this ultimately led to users quitting the game.
– Flawed Premier Match-Up System
Indeed, the inclusion of Premier Rank Mode was a welcome addition. Unfortunately, the match-making system has been nothing but terrible.
Till now, it has done everything except matching up players fairly.
– Terrible Sub-Tick Servers
The horrible sub-tick servers are yet another cause of the massive player count drop. Despite Valve stating that sub-tick servers would improve a player’s online experience, so far, the experience has been anything but good.
– Missing Features From CSGO
Many fan-favorite CSGO features that many players were looking forward to in CS2 in a new and improved way were all but scraped off! Community features like surfing maps and private servers were quite popular back in CSGO, and Valve removing them without giving a second thought has been a straight slap in the face of many players.
– Seasonal Players Timeout
Last but not least, it would be remiss of me if I don’t mention those seasonal players who log into every new game once it launches. Given Counter Strike 2’s tremendous hype, it’s genuinely understandable why everyone dived into the game back when it launched. However, as the hype is fading away, so are those seasonal gamers.
Let’s hope the developers are aware of this and will, sooner rather than later, take measures to prevent additional player count drops.
