Valorant: 28m https://www.dexerto.com/valorant/how-many-people-play-valorant-player-count-tracker-2022-1668158/
Cs2: 24m https://www.counter-strike.net/
It's hard to tell what time period that valorant number is. (maybe because im not making a bloomberg account)
CSGO in september 2023 has 26.4m unique players
and in october 2023 it had 31.46m unique players.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/16QeEjwY39INiVnji75yfQotMW9eqqfpUl47rnKhQ7jY/edit#gid=380683446
Both games are probably achieving similar numbers now that valorant is released in china.
and hopefully both continue to provide healthy competition.
To be as objective as possible... right now CS has like the worst possible optimization and Valorant can be run with pretty much any PC... can't play a game on 10fps now, can you? So first things first Valve.
Next up, just because both games are 5v5 FPS doesn't mean they're any similar at all, especially if we're talking about GO (or CS2 without Valorant-ish stuff) - to put it in proper words:
Valorant is more Gen Z and "user" friendly while CS is, or at least was pain in the ass when we're talking about competitive gameplay... that's no disrespect to any game, but Valorant can be taken casually and be played as a game to chill, CS on the other hand.. more often than not is "hardcore" (relative term, of course) competitive game, starting from spray pattern, to game enviroment in general to everything else...
Some stuff is also regional based, non-EU (professional) CS is pretty much dead... without proper regional teams, tournaments etc you're not really attracting new players... back in the day with ESL Pro League online and divisions for each region you had something to watch... nowadays it's EU or bust...
Take it as a bold statement, but.. Valorant players are mostly playing to have fun, CS players are here to sweat.
Can't say that I agree, I'm not saying that there're no competitive players... I'm saying that with valorant graphics (being way more colorful etc), easier spray pattern (fact) and overall difference in the gameplay it's way easier to attract casual players who play from time to time to chill than it is for CS..