Other community members loved short mode, saying that short mode allows them to enjoy CSGO whilst having other responsibilities in life such as work, family, and other hobbies. However, after analysing over 7.6 million matches from October 2021 to June 2022 we found that short matches are on average 25% of the matches played by Leetify users, even after Operation Riptide ended! Initially, this game mode was met with negative reactions from the community, with people claiming that the shorter rounds made the economy unbalanced, it was nothing like "real CSGO", and that very few people would bother playing it! Some community members argued that Operation Riptide was the reason that the short mode received so much attention, as multiple missions involved playing in a short match. This halves the time it takes to complete a match, making it more accessible to people who have less time to spend playing CSGO. This exemplifies the importance of operations to CSGO's popularity, giving players a reason to come back to the game and take part in the weekly challenges, try new maps, and enjoy new skins.Īlongside Operation Riptide, Valve also added a new form of competitive to CSGO, a short mode which has 8 rounds each half instead of 15. In September, Valve blessed us with the release of Operation Riptide, which increased the peak players from 802,544 in August to 942,519 in September. However, the peak has hovered around 950,000 players, with a peak of 1,013,237 players in March 2022! As you can see on the graph in July and August 2021, we had the lowest peak players in CSGO since the start of the pandemic. Since the first State of CSGO article, CSGO has failed to reach the pandemic player peak of over 1.3 million players. This is a brilliant sign for the health of the game, as a strong retention rate combined with an increasing viewership of CSGO esports events and engagement with operations bodes well for CSGO's continued popularity. Whilst it is unrealistic to expect our playerbase to stay at the heights reached during the pandemic, CSGO is 250,000 players above our pre-pandemic levels. To capitalise on these growth opportunities, CSGO needs to keep players engaged long-term. Retention is important for CSGO as major tournaments and operations attract a massive amount of past, present, and potential CSGO players to the game. This situation proved to be a perfect science experiment to test how well video games could retain their newfound playerbases. As we transitioned into the post-pandemic world, people left behind video games for work, school, or outdoor activities. August 2012 to June 2022ĭuring the pandemic, gaming saw a massive influx of players as people had plenty of time on their hands. CSGO is back, and it's better than ever!ĬSGO has changed significantly over the past year, so we decided to see how the playerbase has reacted to these changes. The newest numbers show that the era of instability is decidedly over. However, we will mention it during our discussion on esports viewership. We viewed CSGO as in a state of instability, and we did not know what was in store for the game heading into the end of 2021 with our first major in almost two years on the horizon! This article covers data from CSGO's launch in 2012 to June 2022, which sadly means we missed out on IEM Cologne's 1.25 million viewership peak. The last edition of the state of CSGO ended with a reflection on CSGO's long history of growth and resilience whilst highlighting the potential risks and exciting opportunities for the games ecosystem. As we travelled down the off-ramp of lockdown and the online era, we were unsure about how well CS:GO would recover. We used playerbase data, esports viewership metrics, and the geography of CSGO players to understand how far we have come as a community. Since our last article, the CSGO ecosystem has had some seismic changes with a new shortened version of competitive mode, PGL Stockholm smashing viewership records, and PGL Antwerp showcasing that Stockholm's viewership wasn't a fluke! By evaluating how these events have affected the CSGO ecosystem and looking forward to what lies ahead of us, we seek to answer the question "what is the state of CSGO?"Įleven months ago, we posted our first State of CSGO article.