Did CS:GO's new battle royale Danger Zone mode bring you back to the game for the first time in a while? Did you play it a lot more over the Christmas period? Even if you answered no to both of those questions, many more people would answer yes, as CS:GO had its biggest month ever at the end of last year, with more than 20.5 million players duking it out in the game's carious maps, according to PCGamesN.
These numbers are more than double those that the game saw in November, which shows a huge gain in general players. There have been greater concurrent player numbers over the years, with December hitting a maximum of 746,000 and more than 800,000 in months of years gone by. But that's still a huge peak compared to the previous few months, which saw player numbers max out at 500,000 or even 400,000.
The game may still be gaining in popularity too, with some 3,000 more players gaming away in the last 30 days than in the preceding 30.
This latest surge is no doubt encouraged by the blend of the new battle royale mode and the new free to play model. But it shows that CS:GO still has a lot of life in it, considering it's a six year old game, based on a format and franchise that's almost two decades old at this point.
Do you think CS:GO can gain even more of a market share? It's retained its near-top spot on Steam's charts for years, only really being supplanted by Valve's other titles and the monster that is and was, PUBG.
