Cover-Credits:
The talk of the town is the release of Counter-Strike 2 and the community is rejoicing at the reveal. The game was officially announced on 22nd March by Valve and is all set to release in the Summer of 2023. Big esports personalities and players reacted to the reveal and talked about how it is likely going to be a game-changer. Twitch star and YouTuber Saqib Ali “Lirik” Zahid, who has a long-standing connection to the franchise dating all the way back to Counter-Strike 1.6, was one of the many who was thrilled after watching the reveal. While Lirik was ecstatic and appreciated the changes being made with the Source 2 engine, he also talked about the treatment that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) and Dota 2 receive at the hands of Valve and Gabe Newell.
Lirik on the CS: GO treatment
On his livestream on Twitch, Lirik played a video from 12 years ago where former Intel vice president Shmuel “Mooly” Eden asked Valve's Gabe Newell, “When are you going to release Counter-Strike 2?” To this, Gabe replied, “Nah, we have to ship Portal 2 and then we have to ship Dota 2 and then we’ll worry about Counter-Strike.”
While watching this video, Lirik commented, “Oh my god. I get it, bro. Counter-Strike’s Gaben’s b***rd child, alright? That’s what it is. Gaben loves Dota, okay? Gaben loves f**** Dota.” The streamer went on to compare how both the games are doing presently and weighed in on why Counter-Strike gets treated differently.
Lirik added that Gabe knows and understands that Counter-Strike is performing well. But he had an interesting, funny take as he compared Dota 2 and Counter-Strike to two children deciding on whether on not to follow in their father’s footsteps.
According to Lirik, Dota 2 is the golden child that follows the dad’s footsteps to mirror every move, whereas Counter-Strike is rebellious in the sense that it does not follow the father blindly.
“Counter-Strike doesn’t really follow that path. But somehow, even though, Counter-Strike is performing so well to the point it's most likely making more money than Dota 2. Even though he [Counter-Strike] didn't follow the path of Dota 2. So Counter-Strike just takes a little more time. I don’t know actually,” said Lirik, asking his chat whether CS makes more money than Dota 2 currently.
While Lirik’s viewers had differing answers to the money made by CS: GO and Dota 2, they were more curious to know what he thought about Team Fortress 2 (TF2). Commenting on Team Fortress 2, Lirik said, “And then TF2 is forgotten. Sadge. Gaben forgot he had a child named TF2. He does not remember. Insane.”
Notably, in 2022, Dota 2 reportedly generated around $300 Million USD in revenue from its Battle Pass, according to Team Secret and Stratz. Meanwhile, it is claimed that CS: GO makes approximately over $54 Million USD every single month from its in-game purchases.
YouTuber and skin trader Anomaly, after working with some data provided by Redditor Fjedjik, claimed to have calculated the number of cases being opened every day. He claimed that between May 2021 and January 2023, a total of 458 million cases were opened by players, and using his mathematical formula, he derived that 714,509 cases were opened per day.
Since a case costs $2.50 USD to open, this means that Valve is making up to $1,786,271.45 USD every day which translates to $54 Million USD per month on average and $651,989,078.25 USD per year.
