eSports has been one of the fastest-growing parts of the entertainment industry in recent years, but how big a part has Counter-Strike played in its rise? As arguably the most important game in the eSports world, it’s been a huge part of the success of the competitive gaming business.
Why Is CS:GO So Popular in eSports?
Competitive gaming has been around for a long time and has been carried out on the most popular games in each era, starting with the likes of Street Fighter and GoldenEye before gradually moving through the biggest games in each decade.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released in 2012 by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment and quickly became a massive hit among games. The majority of critics gave it excellent reviews while word of mouth spread among players who enjoyed it and wanted to play it with others.
This came at a time when streaming had recently been making waves in the gaming community as Twitch was new on the scene and was rapidly gaining users. It was the perfect time for the game to be launched and it’s interesting to see that many of the top eSports titles were released around that time.
CS:GO gained a huge number of players in the first year thanks to its exciting gameplay of Terrorists versus Counter-Terrorists in different modes. Many companies like Jack’s House saw the potential and started comparing CS skins and other game items.
That level of popularity didn’t drop at all over the next few years and in 2023 the game reached a new record of 1.4 million concurrent players.
The History of Competitive Gaming on Counter-Strike
The excellent gameplay on CS:GO is just one of the reasons why it has been so successful for over a decade. We also need to take into account the fact that this is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series of multiplayer tactical shooters, with the first title coming in 2000.
By the time CS:GO had been released, the series had already built up a strong reputation for competitive play. In fact, we need to go all the way back to 2001 to find the first major tournament that was held featuring this game. That was at the first meeting of the Cyberathlete Professional League, which remained one of the top events of this type for several years.
With CS:GO released in 2012, the following year saw another major step forward for competitive gaming on this title, as Valve began to sponsor the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships. This became one of the biggest tournaments in the esports world and Team Vitality was the latest winner, collecting the 2023 title at the BLAST Paris Major.
What Other Games Are Played in Major Tournaments?
This is possibly the most popular eSports game of the last decade, with some of the biggest and best teams competing at CS:GO events for huge prizes. But it’s far from the only game that gets played in this way, as the industry is big enough to include several huge games. League of Legends is a good example of another game that has become a firm favorite in the sports circuit.
League of Legends was released by Riot Games in 2009 as a multiplayer online battle arena game. Unlike CS:GO it was free to play right from the start and received positive reviews that helped build up its userbase. By 2019, it had a maximum of eight million players taking part concurrently and some people call it the biggest esports title, ahead of even CS:GO. This perception was added to when more than 100 million viewers registered for the 2019 League of Legends World Championship.
Dota 2 is another multiplayer game regularly rated as one of the best in the eSports world. Since its release in 2013, Dota 2 has been an incredibly popular game that has been particularly big in the competitive gaming scene. The Dota Pro Circuit organized by Valve ran between 2017 and 2023 as one of the biggest eSports events of the year.
What Can We Expect in the Future?
In such as fast-moving industry, it’s something of a surprise that CS:GO and the other games we’ve looked at have stayed on top for so long. Yet, things are going to change soon, as the release of Counter-Strike 2 means that a new game in the series is set to replace CS:GO as one of the titles that dominate eSports.
Released earlier this year, CS2 is going to replace CS:GO immediately in many events, such as the PGL Major to be held in Copenhagen in 2024. The switch to a new game may prove to be complicated, but the early signs suggest that the pro players and tournament organizers are already prepared to make this move and turn the latest instalment in the Counter-Strike series into the next worldwide eSports sensation.