10 Old Video Games Kept Alive By Hardcore Fans

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released by Valve Corporation back in 2012 and, though it received warm enough reviews and continued to helped fuel the growing Esports scene in the video game community, it wasn't until six years later in December 2018 with the game switching to a free to play model that the fourth instalment in the Counter-Strike series really exploded into life.

CS:GO might not have the sales of Call of Duty or the cultural impact of Overwatch, but what it does have is easily one of the best competitive scenes found anywhere in the world of gaming that is only growing every year.

Streams of events and competitions where the game is being played by the highest skilled players regularly draw in tens of thousands of viewers, events such as the ESL One Cologne have been able to boast a prize purse of $1 million and the FPS title has been able to become one of the most lucrative games in the world thanks to the addition of skins into the game.

January 2019 saw the game peak at 20 million monthly active users, double what it was able to register in 2016, but popularity for the game soared in the spring of 2020 when CS:GO hit the 1 million concurrent player mark on Steam.

Though this fairytale story is sweet enough for a game seven years old now, none of it would have been possible without the dedication of its core group of passionate fans that have stuck around from the beginning.