Valve joins 6,000-hour CS:GO vets in emotional goodbyes as Counter-Strike 2 prepares for launch

As Valve's apparent tease of an impending Counter-Strike 2 launch looms, loyal Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players are sharing their stories and playtimes, and now the game's official count has gotten in on the goodbyes too. 

Last week, the official Counter-Strike account posted a teasing tweet that pretty much the competitive FPS community has taken to mean that CS2 is going to launch on Wednesday, September 27. We'll find out in less than 24 hours if that's true or not (the Twitter banner now says "dawn of the final day," for what it's worth), but for now, fans of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are saying their goodbyes and sharing their hour counts in the iconic shooter.

Look, I know people put a lot of time into their competitive games, but as a variety gamer who's never put more than a few hundred hours into anything, the dedication here is astounding. You can scroll through Reddit and Twitter comments if you want to see people talk about some very big numbers, but even the averages are ridiculous. There are loads of fans who've crossed the 2,000 hour mark, and a fair few who have gone past 6,000 or more.

I started writing this story prepared to point to this record of nearly 10,000 hours played as the biggest thing on my radar, but no. Check out this Steam profile of a Portuguese player who goes by Tears. 24,995 hours recorded in CS:GO. That's 2.85 years of nonstop Counter-Strike. I hope Tears can manage a few more hours before CS2 launches - it'd be a shame if that number never crossed the 25,000 hour mark.

Of course, there's a pretty good chance that everybody's hour counts will carry forward into CS2, which is supposed to launch as a free update for CS:GO. In theory, that means that Steam will continue to record hours played as it's all the same game, so whether your hour count brings you pride or shame, you might have to keep living with it.

If you really want to see some ridiculous hour counts, head over to the Steam Ladder playtime leaderboard. I have my suspicions that a fair few of these players have gotten their hour counts by idling for extended periods, but racking up something like 87,000 hours shows some impressive dedication in any case.

You can lose a lot of hours to the best FPS games out there.