Why is Counter Strike Global Offensive Seeing a Dip in The Viewership?

The Massive Drop Down in the Viewership

So as to begin with, let us talk about the recently concluded Valve sponsored Major. ESL One Cologne saw a massive dip in the amount of people watching the games, i.e., it’s viewership and it is quite huge for Valve to be worried about. According to numerous reports by HLTV and other Counter Strike Global Offensive news reporting websites, the viewership of the final game of the ESL One Cologne which was between SK Gaming and Liquid Gaming saw 37% less viewership as compared to the final of the MLG Columbus which was the first Major of 2016. Not only the final game, but the tournament as a whole had lesser viewership than the latter.

To put it in perspective, it is quite a big dip for something which is expected to grow at an enormous rate in the future.

The Unusual Timings

One of the root causes of this dip in the viewership might be the unusual timings for the North American viewers. Most of the games were streamed during the time when it was midnight in the North American continent which initially lead to even the ‘die-hard’ fans not able to watch their favorite teams. It is worth noting that most of the CS:GO’s traffic comes from the North American continents, notably from The United States of America and Canada.

People aren’t crazy about skins anymore?

Apart from the decrease in the viewership, Counter Strike Global Offensive has also seen a dip in the amount of active players playing the game in the past few months. While many blame the recent updates that have made the game more unstable (even if those updates are better in the long run, like the M4A4, M4A1-S and AK-17 dynamic recoil update. Also, the sound changes to the guns hasn’t helped the situation either) while other say that this might be because of the fact that the craze to get the best skins for the guns, something that brought many players to the game is no more and the players themselves have slowly started to get away from the skins.

Basically, to conclude, one can say that the game is now going back to the state where it was before CS GO, i.e., purely skill based but there are not a lot of strong trends to prove this point.

The Test

All of these questions would be answered in the next Major which is supposed to take place at the end of this year, though many reports claim that we would not have a third Major this year and instead have one in the starting of 2017. It all comes down to that Major, if it’s a hit, Valve can take a sigh of relief and be sure that the community is all normal and it was just due to certain facts that the ESL One Cologne was a fail. Otherwise, it would be a high time for Valve to bring some changes which would keep the players attached to it for longer (Like the update which brought in gun skins and kept and grew the player base of the game).

All and all, being a Counter Strike fan myself, I would just hope that the game really holds a strong future and continues to be a benchmark for the FPS games.

Consider dropping a comment if you agree or disagree with this article. We can have a really healthy debate. Also, what new features would you like to be added in Counter Strike : Global Offensive to make it even more fun than it currently is?

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