Gaming News

Source Player Count Surges, Possibly Thanks To Garry’s Mod

On Jul 28, 2025 7:37 am, by NuclearCoffee

Counter-Strike: Source and Garry’s Mod are both synonymous with the mid-2000s era of PC gaming. CS:S is a source-based remake of the iconic shooter Counter-Strike, which has since gone on to become a global phenomenon, garnering millions of daily players, and GMod gave us Skibidi Toilet.

“Modders Should Reconsider How They See Valve”: After Eight Years Of Work, One Community Mod Previously Greenlit By Valve Has Been Shut Down

Classic Offensive is, sadly, no more.

While Counter-Strike 2 is one of the most popular games in the world now, it seems that time moves in a flat circle, with 2006’s Garry’s Mod appearing to cause 2004’s Counter-Strike: Source to reach its highest player count since as far back as April 2012.

Players Have Flocked Back To Counter-Strike: Source Following GMod Integration

Garry's Mod a suited man with a suitcase flailing his arms and screaming in a wagon as a masked person chases him.

Over the last few weeks, Counter-Strike: Source (and Half-Life 2) content has been added into Garry’s Mod. This means that players “no longer need to own those games and have them installed to play on community maps that expect you to have this content,” allowing them to jump into custom maps without facing bright pink and dark black stand-in textures if they don’t own CS:S,

Thanks to “gracious permission from Valve,” this new update has seemingly caused a massive surge in players returning to the 2004 tactical FPS.

Over the weekend, according to data from SteamDB, Counter-Strike: Source reached a staggering concurrent player count of 56,987, the highest it has been since 61,373 players played together in April 2012, almost 13 and a half years ago. That’s more players than games like Helldivers 2 and Ready or Not reached on Steam over the weekend, and more than double that of Overwatch 2 and the struggling Mecha Break.

While, of course, players don’t need CS:S installed now to access the GMod content, there is the very real possibility that this content update has caused a snowball effect, making players return to the 21-year-old title.

Counter Strike Source player count stats. — Credit: SteamDB

There is, however, a possibility that this isn’t the Cinderella story that we all hoped for. Although there are some suggestions and reasons to believe that CS: Source is undergoing a genuine resurgence, online reports indicate there has been an increase in “bottled servers that are advertising some Russian website.”

I’m choosing to ignore this, though, and I’m here to declare that the golden era of gaming is back (even if it’s not).