In January 2020 , Counter-Strike : Global Offensive ( CS : GO ) reached 817.23 thousand concurrent players on Steam . The game reached its record high peak concurrent player number in April 2016 , at nearly 850.5 thousand gamers playing at the same time . Counter Strike still going strong Despite the fact that CS : GO was released some seven years ago in August 2012 , the game is still very popular online and has developed a cult following . As of January 2019 , Counter-Strike had more than 20 million monthly active users , double the figure from May 2016 . Counter-Strike : Global Offensive is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series of games . As with its predecessors , the game takes the form of a multiplayer first-person shooter in which two teams are pitted against each other in a variety of different game modes . Not just a game for the gamers While millions of gamers have fun playing Counter-Strike : Global Offensive , millions more watch official tournaments online . Some of the leading CS : GO eSports tournaments worldwide in 2018 included IEM Katowice 2018 and ELEAGUE Major 2018 , the latter peaking at almost 1.9 million viewers . With such a large fanbase , it is unsurprising that these eSports tournaments are worth big money . The annual cumulative tournament prize pool for the game stood at 22.65 million U.S. dollars in 2018 , a significant increase on the previous two years . Gamers are therefore in line for big paydays if they do well in these tournaments , with Andreas Højsleth , known by his online alias , Xyp9x , currently leading the earnings table for CS : GO eSports players .
