> shocking number of people without disposable income who were seriously investing in CS items
If you meant children, with access to parents credit cards, who are addicted to gambling, you’d be more accurate. Children gambling is a huge problem in CS, which created this economy. The players know it, the influencers know it, Valve knows it and pretty much anyone who’s played CS in the recent years knows it. This implosion does nothing more than reset the system for Valve so that they can continue to make money.
How much of the CS player base is actually kids? Maybe wrongly, my view of CS is that it's a legacy game with an audience in their 30s or 40s. And that kids are mostly gambling with roblox or fornite.
CS2 is very much alive. If you look at the pro scene, most players are in the 19-25 range (some outliers are older and younger) which makes sense since it’s much easier to become a pro after 18 than before. But that also implies a healthy pipeline of young players. Obviously the exact breakdown is difficult to estimate, but I’d be inclined to think fewer people in 30s and 40s would have time for CS than in their teens and 20s. I could be wrong.
From mid-2018, CS2 has trended upward at +150,000 players/year. Starting at 500-600,000 that lasted from ~2015 to 2018 with mostly flat rate, after Covid, CS2 has been linearly upward pretty much constantly. The 24hr peak recently was 1,550,265 logged in.
One week variance is maybe ~700,000 during low timeframes, and 1,500,000 during peak hours pretty much every single day. Tends to peak yearly in May, with low tides in May and Nov-Dec usually, although last Dec was relatively up. 2020 and 2023 were both large years, 2025's looking similar.
On the player age question, the best data I was able to find on a quick search was https://www.hltv.org/
Total search over the full range returns 955 entries. Breakdowns by age look like its a pretty heavily 19-24 playerbase. 25-30's also pretty significant. Almost 77% of the player base between them.
On the other hand I am not sure that most people would be playing the same game for 20+ years - I played CS religiously during my school years, but at some point, even if you keep playing games, you just want something else
If you meant children, with access to parents credit cards, who are addicted to gambling, you’d be more accurate. Children gambling is a huge problem in CS, which created this economy. The players know it, the influencers know it, Valve knows it and pretty much anyone who’s played CS in the recent years knows it. This implosion does nothing more than reset the system for Valve so that they can continue to make money.