On the 19th of June 1999, the first official beta for Counter-Strike was released. Just this last week, the community celebrated the game’s 25th anniversary… and yet, one would be forgiven for not having heard more about the milestone. That’s because the game’s developer and publisher, Valve, frequently considers the game’s birthday to be on the 9th of November each year: The day that Counter-Strike 1.0 launched under Valve’s banner.
Naturally, hardcore members of the community were disappointed with the lack of fanfare around what many consider to be the game’s true release date. This feels like a massive missed opportunity, given how community events can drive massive amounts of traffic both to the game itself and to live-streaming platforms (as seen with recent anniversary celebrations for Hearthstone and PUBG).
As our own small way of rectifying this mistake, Stream Hatchet is looking back over the history of Counter-Strike which, for our purposes here, involves Counter-Strike, CS:GO and Counter-Strike 2 viewership combined. We’re looking at the most popular Counter-Strike events of all time, and the streamers who are currently pulling in the bulk of the game’s viewership.
Counter-Strike is a Consistent Force on Live Streaming
Counter-Strike has remained fairly steady throughout the time since Stream Hatchet began tracking the game back in 2016. Over eight years, Counter-Strike viewership has more than doubled from 81M hours watched to 197M hours watched per quarter. The bulk of this jump aligns with the industry-wide boost to streaming viewership that came as a result of the COVID lockdown. In the months preceding the COVID lockdown in many parts of the globe, viewership rose from 118M hours watched in Q2 of 2019 up to its highest quarterly viewership ever of 326M hours watched in Q2 of 2020.
The other key turning point in Counter-Strike’s viewership was the release of Counter-Strike 2’s beta on the 22nd of March 2023 which saw a jump in quarterly viewership of 60M hours watched compared to the previous quarter. This was a phenomenal performance, with a peak viewership of 930K on the day of release. More surprising, even, are the platforms that contributed most to the game’s viewership. Twitch is typically considered the go-to platform for competitive games, but Steam has proven itself a worthy adversary with 13.1M hours watched of Counter-Strike content in Q1 2024.
Counter-Strike Events are Mainstays of the Esports Calendar
A quick glance at the top esports events over the past eight years makes one thing clear: The PGL Major tournaments are the biggest events on the Counter-Strike esports calendar, occupying 4 of the top 10 spots. The 2021 PGL Major Stockholm was the most viewed event ever thanks to a COVID-era bump with 63.7M hours watched and a massive peak viewership of 2.5M.
Impressively, the 2023 BLAST.tv Paris Major brought in 57M hours watched, a seeming outlier on the leaderboard. Fans know, of course, that this was the last esports tournament for CS:GO before switching over to Counter-Strike 2 and the only Major event in 2023. The Paris Major also reflects the importance of the European community, with 7 of the top 10 events taking place in European cities.
The Counter-Strike community is hungry for more events in 2024 now, and Valve is sure to listen as esports viewership accounts for a massive fraction of the game’s total viewership. As an example, in Q2 of 2022 over half of all Counter-Strike viewership came from esports events. Sustaining esports should therefore be a top priority for Valve.
The Top Counter-Strike Streamers are All From Western Countries
Looking at the top Counter-Strike streamers over the past 12 months backs up the aforementioned dependence of the game’s esports on European events. Every streamer in the top 10 is from a Western country, with Russian and English-speaking streamers dominating the leaderboard. The top streamers evelone2004 and buster are both Russian-speaking with average viewerships (AMAs) of 25K and 24K, respectively. Looking at their channels also reveals a single-minded attitude towards content, almost exclusively playing Counter-Strike. English-speaking streamers tend to have more variety, however, with TimTheTatman and Shroud both covering multiple games even outside of esports.
A different strand of content creators also emerges when looking at ohnePixel and Gaules. These two creators overwhelm the other top 10 holders in terms of sheer airtime, with ohnePixel generating 33M hours watched from 1.6K hours aired and Gaules commanding an incredible 84M hours watched from close to 5K hours aired. Although they may have lower AMAs than some of the other streamers, this comprehensive coverage of the Counter-Strike scene no doubt makes them the go-to source for hardcore fans of the game rather than casual esports watchers.
Counter-Strike is a mainstay of the streaming space, hugely important to Western fans. However, the game still has room to expand into the Asian or Oceanic markets and increase its footprint in the area. At the moment, more stylized shooters like VALORANT occupy these areas. In the short term, it will be interesting to see if and how Valve celebrates Counter-Strike in November of 2025 for its own version of the game’s 25th anniversary.
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