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(SteamSpy) CS:GO surpasses Minecraft as the best selling PC game of all time

LQX

Member
Mincraft still costs close to $30 though and never goes on sale. CS:GO has ALOT of players with more than one account. Still counts as sale but a ton of those sales are not from "new" users.
 
Lol. It's the best competitive shooter ever created.

Maybe in a world where Counter-Strike doesn't exist.

CS:GO is ok, but the skill ceiling is considerably lower than CS. Best shooter that's alive right now though, but it's because there's essentially no competition.
 
That doesn't include the 10s of millions sold on the Windows 10 Store.
Hah.

That's pretty awesome. Both games are universally known at this point.
Umm, CSGO is nowhere near Minecraft in this arena. Counterstrike is nowhere near universally known outside of enthusiasts.
 

Qassim

Member
That doesn't include the 10s of millions sold on the Windows 10 Store.
Hah.


Umm, CSGO is nowhere near Minecraft in this arena. Counterstrike is nowhere near universally known outside of enthusiasts.

Maybe among certain ages, but Counter-Strike was *the* shooter for a good period of time (long before CSGO). I reckon it has a good amount of name recognition - Minecraft is definitely the bigger game at the moment though, can't really argue that. There aren't many games that can compete with Minecraft in that regard.
 
Really don't understand all these posts about how Minecraft costs more or how many people buy multiple copies of CSGO. Those aren't the stats in consideration here. I'm sure games like League of Legends and World of Warcraft have had more players or made more money. This is about how the game has sold 25 million copies on a single platform, which is pretty goddamn impressive especially considering the state it launched in.
 

Ploid 3.0

Member
Surely Valve could send a script, and the Half Life license to another dev to make for what they would consider as chump change at this point.
 

Qassim

Member
That's really impressive, especially considering I remember the CS:GO launch not going very well at all

It's possibly the best turn around of any game ever post-launch. When it launched, it would have days where it'd be beaten by CS: Source and 1.6 in concurrent users, it gradually got a small following that kept it above Source at least for a reasonable amount of time, but still dipped below 1.6 frequently. They increased the concurrent player count by 10x at a minimum, well over 10x at its peak.

A brand new game in a series struggling to beat a (at the time) 13 year old game and a 8 year old game in the same series. It was a pretty dire situation.

Valve managed to turn it around to become one of the biggest games in the industry and, for whatever people want to say about it, one of the best competitive games out now and (for my money) the best competitive fps out by far. As I've said in other threads, it's why I still feel oddly grateful for it - when it came out - it felt like those of us who loved the style of competitive play that Counter-Strike did like no other were to be without a game, the first proper new entry into the series in 8 years was a flop. But no, here I am over 4 years later and the game (today) has a concurrent player count of 550k, is still actively updated with new maps and tweaks and good major tournaments.

Valve have been so far from perfect in their direction in maintaining it, but the simple fact for me is, nothing else is even in the same league as CSGO in terms of what it offers. They add the monetisation stuff without compromising the game (sprays in competitive are a bit iffy though at the moment, but its not really new to the series), which is all I can ask for.
 
Multiple accounts from smurfers and cheaters. Only because that. I love the game but it's obvious that isn't that good selling as Minecraft.

It's selling better unless "smurfers" don't count for whatever arbitrary reason. They pay twice so clearly, they count.
 
So pissed there's no competition, CSGO is the red headed mutant stepchild in the valve family (Tf2 is buried). I bet the one guy working on this game is proud though.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
But weren't there literally thousands of people buying multiple copies during sales to use in case they got their cheating accounts banned? To the point where they had to change how gifting works to try and curb the abuse?
 
But weren't there literally thousands of people buying multiple copies during sales to use in case they got their cheating accounts banned? To the point where they had to change how gifting works to try and curb the abuse?

Can you also add why that matters? I have never seen double/tripple/quadruble dippers being excluded from sales data on any other platform. I'm not sure what you guys are hinting at really. It makes no sense at all.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
1) I'm pretty sure that counter doesn't include retail Minecraft codes bought from the store.

2) A lot of those sales are from banned accounts, cheaters etc. I would guestimate around 10-15 million of those are legit purchases.

Can you delineate why a sale should not be considered a sale unless the product is going to a unique customer? Nothing about the the thread title or the OP itself suggests that CS:GO is the most uniquely played PC game of all time. The metric here is sales and sales only.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
Can you also add why that matters? I have never seen double/tripple/quadruble dippers being excluded from sales data on any other platform. I'm not sure what you guys are hinting at really. It makes no sense at all.

You're not sure how it makes sense?

Ok. Valve had such an issue with people buying multiple copies for illicit purposes that they cost themselves sales to try and stop the problem. Now, how you interpret that in regards to the sales milestone is up to you, but to deny its relevance is just being silly.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
You're not sure how it makes sense?

Ok. Valve had such an issue with people buying multiple copies for illicit purposes that they cost themselves sales to try and stop the problem. Now, how you interpret that in regards to the sales milestone is up to you, but to deny its relevance is just being silly.

He's not sure why it's a relevant counter-point to the figure. All you've done is establish that duplicate sales are a factor; what he was asking for is an explanation as to why it's important to distinguish between sales to unique customers and sales to existing players. I mean, it's not as though the news is misleading: the game has sold ~25m.
 

Lanrutcon

Member
He's not sure why it's a relevant counter-point to the figure. All you've done is establish that duplicate sales are a factor; what he was asking for is an explanation as to why the distinction is important.

Ah, there's the confusion: it's not a counter point to the figure.

Normally duplicate sales aren't even worth mentioning, in this game's case the duplicate sales went way beyond the norm due the environment of cheating/smurfing. Valve had to actively step in and prohibit additional purchases for gifting. When was the last time you had a publisher go "We're going to stop you buying more of our stuff"?. They probably cost themselves a fair number of sales by disabling gifting, to be fair.
 

JaseC

gave away the keys to the kingdom.
Ah, there's the confusion: it's not a counter point to the figure.

Okay, now everyone is on the same page. Perhaps, though, it wasn't the best idea to begin your post with "But". ;) People are, naturally, going to interpret it as a rebuttal.
 

jono51

Banned
Good for them, I guess. To me at least, it'll never be a "proper" game until they add a campaign and I can pick up a boxed copy at retail for $60.
 

nynt9

Member
Good for them, I guess. To me at least, it'll never be a "proper" game until they add a campaign and I can pick up a boxed copy at retail for $60.

I can't tell if this post is straight faced or satire of people who post stuff like this straight faced.
 

nerdbot

Member
While I don't disagree that a significant chunk of CSGO's sales are from banned accounts or malicious trading purposes, or just otherwise having a second account, I can't imagine that number being THAT big. Y'all are talking like you could account for half the sales of CSGO on banned accounts alone. It's a high number but I can't imagine literally millions of sales attributable to botting...and even then a sale's still a sale.

I'm pretty surprised to hear CSGO is this successful, in a way, because it slid under the radar for me. I could never get into that particular brand of shooter and it was around CSGO's release that I started kinda falling off with PC gaming for a while. The venn diagram of me and CSGO is two separate circles, it's got no overlap with me. Not saying this as some kinda weird diss on the game, CS has just always eluded me.

Maybe someday Valve will release another game. Any game. Please?
 

Outrun

Member
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Only now do you understand...
 
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