Analyst Thour suggested that 2026 could be a defining year for the future of Counter-Strike
Data miner Avi “Thour” Thour posted the latest user statistics for Counter-Strike 2 on his official page on social media platform X. According to statistics from SteamDB, after reaching an all-time high of 1.86 million players in April 2025, Valve’s competitive shooter has seen a noticeable decline.
Thour commented on the current situation on his social media as follows:
After reaching an all-time high of 1.86 million players in April 2025, CS2 is currently in decline. We saw a similar situation between 2020 and 2022, but we always bounced back and continued to grow. 2026 could be a pivotal year for Counter-Strike.
Later in the comments, the data miner added the following to his statement:
I really, really hope that Valve will do everything possible to maintain steady growth, but to do that, they need to take care of the existing player base.
At the time the data was recorded, there were 723,205 players on the servers, and the daily peak was 1,333,475 players. The exact all-time high, set fifteen months ago, was recorded at 1,862,531 users.
Earlier, data miner Avi “Thour” Thour also discussed how much the large smoke clouds in Counter-Strike 2 affect the game’s performance. According to him, while a smoke grenade is active, performance drops from approximately 900 to 650 FPS.
Photo: Valve.
Dan Kleiman
