Here are the current statistics for all my official (well, originally at least) CS maps, according to ServerSpy:

Counter-Strike: Source

1 de_dust2 5231 1262 22.8%

2 de_dust 3236 1475 14.1%

6 de_cbble 1147 441 5.0%

13 de_tides 163 59 0.7%

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero

1 de_dust2_cz 423 75 24.3%

3 de_dust_cz 132 30 7.6%

20 de_cbble_cz 19 7 1.1%

25 de_tides_cz 16 12 0.9%

~ de_sienna_cz 0 0 0%

Counter-Strike 1.6

1 de_dust2 4762 1264 28.9%

3 de_dust 1211 436 7.4%

8 de_cbble 415 190 2.5%

In all, right this second, that’s about 16,000 people playing my maps, a quarter of the entire CS population… according to that one source, anyway. There may be fewer, there may be more. If they all play for just one hour, that’s over 2 years of total play time. It’s ridiculous. At that’s just one point in one day… think how many hours are spent each week, each year… thousands of years of total playing time, just on a few maps. Take into account all the maps, all the players, all the years… Counter-Strike has sucked more time out of people than most TV shows can claim to own. You could spend you entire life playing CS and not come close to the total amount of time that has/will be spent playing it, although that would be an incredibly bad way to spend your life.

There are about 50,000 people playing Counter-Strike right now. That’s a lot.

The figures are absolutely ridiculous. I do not believe them. My brain is not wired up to accept them. I live in denial. Dust, Dust 2 and Cobble are just maps I made which people talk about a bit, occasionally. They’re not popular.

Here’s my promise - I shall give one pack of Smarties to the first person/team/company who makes an FPS map that completely overthrows those figures by tripling them (40,000 players at a point in time). Also, another pack to the first person who can convince me the CS numbers above are real and true. If they’re particularly successful, I’ll offer two packs, but that’d be it.

See, this is the sort of encouragement people need! I’m sure Dust 2 hasn’t been overthrowed because simply put, no one cares. 16,000? It’s just a few digits.

Edit: Right now, at a quarter to midnight GMT, there are now about 90,000 people playing CS, about 30,000 playing the maps listed above. Interestingly, more than twice as many people are playing HL1/CS1.6 (65,000), than HL2/CS:S (30,000). Completely silly.

Edit 2: …and now, at 20:45 GMT (Tuesday), there are closer to 150,000 people playing CS in all its forms. Whoa.