Our series of articles about the most interesting events in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has become increasingly popular. In February, we provided you with an article containing information about the most interesting events and updates in CS:GO. This text will cover similar information. Here, you will find details about new updates, the most important tournaments in March, and additional information about the game itself. Our main aim is to keep you up to date with all the significant events happening in our favorite game. Additionally, since this is a new format, we would greatly appreciate any feedback on the topic. Please let us know which types of events are most important to you and what details we should cover in upcoming articles. For now, we hope you enjoy reading this article, as quite a lot has happened in the world of CS:GO this month. March 2023 was especially noteworthy, as two records were broken, indicating that the game's popularity is steadily increasing.

News 1: A new record in case openings. CS:GO players unboxed almost 40 million cases in March 2023

If you were to name one of the most important things in CS:GO, what would it be? Gameplay? The feeling of shooting? Fast-paced action? One of the answers is rare skins and case openings. People love customization options almost as much as they love the gameplay itself, so the CS:GO Steam Market is very powerful and provides Valve with millions of dollars each month. According to data from the company and CS:GO Case Tracker, players broke a record in case openings per month in March 2023, spending $98.7 million to open almost 40 million cases (39.5 million, to be specific). This is the highest number since February 2023, when 27.7 million cases were opened. The most popular cases were:

• Dreams and Nightmares case – 5.2 million openings;
• Recoil case – 4.3 million openings;
• Clutch case – 4.2 million openings;

How impressive is this score? Let's provide you with a comparison to other big months across the years:

• January 2022 – 22.3 million cases;
• May 2022 – 23.3 million cases;
• April 2022 – 23.8 million cases;
• July 2022 – 24.3 million cases;
• August 2022 – 25 million cases;
• March 2022 – 26.2 million cases;
• February 2023 – 27.7 million cases;

In other words, in March alone, players purchased almost 13 million more cases than in February. The bar is set very high, so we wonder if this record will ever be broken? You can check the charts on the CS:GO Case Tracker website. The image below is taken from this website.

This amazing record shows that the game's popularity has been increasing a lot in the last few months, possibly due to the anticipation of upcoming updates and events in the game. The next news only further reinforces this thesis."

News 2: CS:GO has broken Player Count Record

As we mentioned in the introduction, two records were broken in March 2023 alone. The first was the amount of cases opened by players, while the second was the player count record. In the past few weeks, CS:GO has been reaching new heights in terms of the amount of players logged to the game. The record of 1,302,348 concurrent players was broken on February 11, 2023, when 1,320,219 players logged to the game. The number of players was so impressive that many people thought that we would have to wait a long time to see this record broken. However, we were proven wrong. The record was broken only eight days later, on February 19, 2023, when the number of concurrent players was 1,324,000. The record was broken again and again, finally reaching an impressive number of 1,519,457 concurrent players over the weekend (Saturday, March 25, 2023 and Sunday, March 26, 2023). This is especially impressive considering the game was released over 11 years ago. Such an increase in popularity is likely connected to the announcement of CS2. The current 1,519,457 peak makes Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the second biggest game on Steam, with only PUBG: Battlegrounds having a higher record of 3.2 million concurrent players. The stats mentioned above were taken from the Steam Charts website.

News 3: FaZe clan had won the ESL Pro League 17 and  Intel® Grand Slam IV

Quite a lot also happened in the professional scene of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. FaZe Clan won the grand final of ESL Pro League in Saint Julian's, Malta. They fought against the Cloud9 team and the score was 3-1. However, the most important achievement here is the fact that FaZe is the first international team to secure Intel® Grand Slam IV by being the first team to win 4 S-tier tournaments. The journey took them 392 days (from February 2022 to March 2023) and they won:

• ESL Pro League S15;
• IEM Katowice 2022;
• Iem Cologne 2022;
• ESL Pro League 17;

Intel® Grand Slam IV is considered the most challenging achievement in the professional CS:GO scene, and only three other teams before FaZe had managed to secure this reward: Astralis, Team Liquid, and Natus Vincere. For their remarkable success, FaZe received $1,000,000 and iconic gold bars. Notably, one of the players had previously won this prestigious title for the second time in his career. Canadian player Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken, a member of the FaZe team, had won the title before with Team Liquid. It is an outstanding accomplishment for him, and it raises the question of whether it is even possible to break Twistzz's record. As he stated before the ESL Pro League Season 17 Grand Final, "I feel we are so close to the Intel Grand Slam, and we won't let anything slip... Right now, it's my main hunger and motivation. I have a chance to make history in this game, and I won't let it go." After the victory, he added, "That was the goal before this event, I changed my mindset to put the Intel Grand Slam before anything. It's a very relieving feeling to know that my hard work and my team's hard work paid off." FaZe teammate Robin “ropz” Kool expressed his emotions after the win, saying, "It's the craziest win I've ever had in my career, the first time I've ever cried after a tournament because this is so beautiful." Since FaZe won the Intel Grand Slam IV, the race has been reset. The only question that remains is: who will secure the Intel Grand Slam V, and how long will we have to wait for the answer?

News 4: Beta of CS2 and potential release date for the full game

As we have mentioned a few times already in this article, it seems that the sudden popularity boost of CS:GO is mostly connected to all the rumors about CS2. The Counter-Strike 2 beta began on the same day the game was officially revealed - March 22, 2023. So, the information from the rumors that mentioned a quick start of testing in March has been confirmed. In turn, the full version of CS 2 will debut in the summer of 2023. Valve hasn't given a specific date yet, as it all depends on the results of the beta tests - including how many things will need to be improved to make everything work perfectly and be ready for professional esports and ranked play. There will be more new content in the game before the actual premiere, and the closer to the debut, the more people will get access to the tests. Many people wonder how they can get access to the beta. According to information provided on the official CS2 Twitter, players for the beta are chosen based on the following factors: trust factor, Steam account standing, and recent playtime on Valve servers.

Therefore, if you want to obtain your personal key for CS2 beta, you must simply wait and hope for luck. Unfortunately, as is often the case with such big news, numerous scam sites have been created to deceive players into providing their Steam account information. This problem was also addressed by Valve on Twitter.

We would also like to warn and notify you that you should avoid any third-party sites that offer access to the Limited Test of CS2. All of these sites are scams, and only Valve can provide you with a key to the beta version of the game. The consequences of using such sites could be severe; in the worst-case scenario, you might even lose your own Steam account. In general, people who use CS2's popularity for cheating and for their own personal gain are despicable, and we should definitely avoid them.

News 5: Valve announces the first major tournament for CS2

It should not be surprising that most of the news we provide here is connected with CS2. After all, the entire fanbase went crazy when the announcement of this title was made. This is why Valve decided to post a tweet about the first major CS2 tournament.

In other words, the first historical CS2 tournament is going to take place between March 17-31 in Copenhagen. Furthermore, as we can see, the BLAST.tv Paris Major (May 8-21) is going to be the last major tournament in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Denmark has a deep history in gaming, so bringing the first CS2 tournament to Royal Arena in Copenhagen is a good choice, especially considering that according to the first information about the tournament, it will be organized by the PGL company. PGL has a long record of hosting successful eSport events. For example, the PGL Major Stockholm held in 2021 was the most watched CS:GO tournament of all time. Additionally, CS:GO Major Antwerp was the largest indoor eSport event in history, with over 20,000 fans watching it.

In general, the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen will feature the top 24 Counter-Strike 2 teams and have an enormous prize pool of $1,250,000. We have high hopes for this event. Silviu Stroie, PGL CEO, hopes that the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen 2024 will be the biggest eSport tournament of all time, breaking all viewership records.

The most important events in CS:GO for March 2023 – summary

As it can be seen, quite a lot happened in the CS:GO community during March 2023. To sum everything up:

• a record of case openings was broken with players opening 40 million cases on which they spent over $98.7 million;
• a player count record was broken on the last weekend of March (Saturday, March 25, 2023 and Sunday, March 26, 2023) with 1,519,457 concurrent players in the game;
• beta tests of Counter-Strike 2 were finally launched;
• the release date for Counter-Strike 2 was given by Valve (summer 2023);
• the BLAST.tv Paris Major (May 8-21) is going to be the last tournament in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive;
• the PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen is going to be the first major CS2 tournament with 24 best teams participating in it;
• FaZe Clan had won the ESL Pro League 17 and, furthermore, secured Intel® Grand Slam IV due to being the first team to win-Tier events organized by ESL: IEM Katowice 2022, IEM Cologne 2022, ESL Pro League Season 15, and ESL Pro League Season 17. Previous Grand Slams were won by Astralis, Team Liquid, and Natus Vincere;
• a new update for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released, providing us with tons of small tweaks making the game even more enjoyable than before;
• a huge amount of scammers appeared in the CS:GO community, who are offering keys for CS2 beta tests. We strongly advise you to avoid such offers. As it was pointed out by Valve, all of them are false.