I don't think you can dismiss 1.8 million concurrent players on CS:GO back in May of this year as just "peer pressure or nostalgia". Plenty of people obviously still find it extremely fun, myself included.

CS:GO had a huge botting problem, game being free to play + rewards you with items that you could sell on the market place, people would afk farm crates, massively inflating the player count

And what game have you moved on to?

I picked up CS about 5 years ago and it's... still a great game?

fast twitch team shooter where solid teamplay and good shots win.

Valorant is too... gimmicky. I don't want magic, I want straight forward tactics.

4/5 of my last solo queue lobbies were solid -- people communicating and playing decently well together. Can't ask for more.

Moved on to PUBG and then Warzone which one may argue was a downgrade to PUBG, but I still stick with it for social gaming.

For deep gaming with competitive elements nothing can touch Escape from Tarkov for me.

The surface level simplicity (and infinitely scalable learning curve) is part of the appeal. It's essentially the chess of video games.

CS is currently at an all time peak of 1.8 million concurrent players, including an actively growing pool of new users. There is no marketing for game, let alone "peer pressure." It is exactly the chase to outrun becoming "outdated" by adding faulty game mechanics that these players are looking to avoid.

Part of why I like CS so much vs modern 'live service' games is that I can play whenever I feel like it and I never feel like I'm missing out on something happening, and when I come back after not playing for weeks or months, everything's the way it was when I left.

Not disputing the popularity.

It’s just that not having ADS into iron sights or vaulting in 2023 game feels archaic. The movement is incredibly clunky; I suppose to preserve that 2000 feel.

Sure Valve didn’t want to break the expectations, and lose a skin-selling cash cow. I was just hoping it would be more than a VERY subtle facelift and more of a very incremental update than a 2.0

The marketing was simple - they replaced CS:GO with the new version. It’s like Twitter changing to X.com without marketing the new brand

> It’s just that not having ADS into iron sights or vaulting in 2023 game feels archaic.

And thank god. Nobody was asking for thi.s

> The movement is incredibly clunky

Clunky to some is incredibly layered to others. Simple, yet oh so difficult to master, but crisp to input (well... there's some nonsense with the subtick system currently making it less crisp than players want, but that can be overcome). CS has multiple movement based subcommunities for a reason.

(from your original comment) > Just move on.

Because you enjoy the mechanics of other competitive shooter titles, doesn't mean that everyone does. You seem to think that if everyone played Apex, Warzone or Tarkov they'd suddenly enjoy it, and presumably their PC or some other factor limits them. Newsflash: plenty have played the others and come back to CS.

It's akin to telling a rugby player: hey, why are you still playing rugby? American Football is so much better. Rugby is an archaic game from the 1900s.