Why are CSGO Servers Down Again? What to do Now?

Aside from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive weapon skins, the next best thing about the leading shooter game is its massive and active player base. However, CSGO servers down issue can be detrimental to the overall experience.

5 years after the definitive update of “Arms Deal”, Valve released yet another feature to the CS:GO community in August 2018. Since then, gamers from all over the world are able to bring the game offline for limitless casual or practice sessions with bots, just like in the early days of Counter-Strike 1.6. 

If you do follow our earlier articles, we’ve shared about how we can master Counter-Strike with grit and determination, making use of available community resources such as surfing and aiming maps to familiarise ourselves with weapon handling, movement and aims. Practice sessions with bots are recommended for those who’re looking to identify map callouts and putting your tactical skills to the test, without the pressure and fear while playing with real-life gamers.

However, Counter-Strike is as strong as it has ever been, and it’s player counts back that up with the general interest lies in action-packed battles with strangers and friends. CS:GO skins compliment the ecosystem by giving everyone a chance for bragging rights in front of others, as they customise their weapon skins based on their individualistic styles. Hence, it goes without a doubt, the main selling point of Counter-Strike is the fun and sense of achievement made through battling with friends and strangers online on Steam client.

Read: How to Get Better at CSGO in 2021?

Susceptibility of CS:GO servers

Like most online game these days, gamers will need to login to the server (ie. Steam client) before they’re able to access the game server and CS GO updates. As a successful game of an industry leading game publisher which produces popular game titles like Half-Life 2, and Team Fortress, CS:GO relies exclusively on servers set up by Valve, which are distributed across the globe. Given the intermittent server issues faced by tech giants such as Facebook, Apple and Netflix, it is not surprising to know that CSGO is susceptible to matchmaking server downtimes as well. 

Since the game is part of the industry leading game service (Steam) client, it shared the bandwidth in some capacity with thousands of different games hosted on Steam. This includes other popular titles such as DOTA 2 and PUBG. Whenever there are instances where an unexpected number of user traffic cause CSGO servers down, the game has therefore been affected as well. 

Although in recent years, numerous game publishers are looking for a decentralised solution to solve the ongoing issue of server instability, gamers may have to experience more such incidents as more gamers are accessing CSGO and other games via the Steam client.

What to do when CSGO Servers go Down?

With a massive global following, Steam servers’ status can be a problem for the CSGO development team especially if it is down too often, as each instance will result in players hunting for an ETA on when the server issue will be back online again. Moreover, it could happen when you’re in the midst of an intensive and engaging battle in CS:GO. Once that happens, you’ll be forced to terminate your battle, making it a frustrating process for most gamers. Also, server maintenance schedules might be unknown to some and it could lead to further resentment when they are brought to wait indefinitely until the restoration of the server.

In order to counteract such issues, the publisher does make a point for gamers to be updated over the latest server status via their official social media channels. But these information don’t always reflect the latest downtime or unplanned outages. This is the reason that the only failsafe method to keep yourself up-to-date with server status would be to refer to the CSGO community for the latest answers, or help others in the community as soon as you detect any anomaly within CS GO.

Major CS:GO server outages in 2021

There were numerous server outages that have hit CS:GO almost every single year since its release in 2012. This year is no different from previous years, as the gaming industry is consistently plagued by server issues. Popular games like CSGO have faced the wrath of server outages multiple times, and this year is definitely not an exception for the shooter. 

On January 30th 2010, it was reported by numerous CS:GO communities from all over the world that most of Steam went down that day, along with the official website. Since it was difficult for the publisher to pinpoint the exact issue on the day of occurrence, the community did not know the cause of outages and Valve has not commented on the issue. But, the unofficial Steam status tracker has reported over half, or 55% of Steam’s connection manager servers, went down on that fateful day.

Four months later in May, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected daily lives in many countries and lockdown ensued. As a result, many players from all over the world have decided to play CS:GO at their convenient hours. But that unexpected influx of gamers this year has put a toll on these servers, as they subsequently went offline as players have reported an error that caused gamers to be stuck with the “Connecting to the CS:GO Server” message. Considering that similar events have happened in the past, they were attended within an hour after hundreds of reports flooded the official channels.

Read: AK-47 Fire Serpent – How is it Doing in 2021?

A June report has shown well over a thousand reports on CSGO servers down, most notably in the EU region, being down across more than 60 different countries.

CSGO & Dota 2 Server Status

Then in July, thousands of players reported on various social and CS:GO community channels that servers went offline, again. Since there was no official announcement of this incident, many gamers were left hanging for hours. However, the server outage was later identified to be caused by DOTA 2’s Battle Pass for The International 2021, which led to an influx of user traffic that Steam servers could not handle in such a short span of time. As a result, it was inadvertently affected by that, along with other games hosted on Steam.

Subsequent verified reports showed that the aftermath has brought down these servers in more than 60 different countries. As the most played Steam gaming title in terms of concurrent player count fuelled by the ongoing pandemic, an outage of this scale has enraged many gamers during that period of downtime. 

In addition to that, DOTA 2 gamers have also said that they were unable to buy the Battle Pass, which is the root issue for July’s server issue. Therefore, it’s safe to assume that CS:GO skin buyers and sellers on Steam Market were affected by the ecosystem-wide disaster.

If you normally play CSGO through the servers for the eastern United States, you might have experienced another outage on 29th July, shortly after the Battle Pass incident. Valve’s US East matchmaking servers went down, and it’s not because of capacity issues or a DDoS attack or anything you’d usually expect – no, they’re down because somebody cut a cable.

“The US East matchmaking server cluster is offline temporarily,” Valve tweets from the official Dota 2 account.

“There is a cut fiber cable causing a wide area outage in the hosting region. In the meantime we suggest queuing on other servers.” 

There’s not yet an estimated time for the fix, and the publisher will be unable to disclose the actions taken by the cable company, therefore it was a long wait for gamers in the region. The issue also affects Team Fortress 2 and CS:GO, but as venerable Valve observer wickedplayer494 notes on Twitter, those games should automatically distribute you to appropriate servers with highly unstable latency rates.

Read: How to Surf in CS:GO? Complete Guide for 2021

The Latest Information about CSGO Servers

Server down time is the last thing that every player wants to see or run into when trying to get their fix of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. For the most part, it’s a problem the public can’t regularly predict because that’s just the nature of the problem, unlike CSGO update. The publisher will announce ahead of time if there’s a scheduled maintenance for CSGO so gamers don’t get caught in the middle of playing during an update. For abnormal occurrences, there are some useful features and sites to check if you run into issues with logging in or gaming.

CSGO has been at the receiving end of community backlash after server outages happened. Server outages were creating great inconvenience for millions of users. Valve is working hard to redeem their loss of player base, much recently due to these issues, like the last server outage in late July.

From major FPS drops to server outages, CSGO has been struggling lately to run smoothly. Riot’s Valorant is actively gaining player base due to its responsiveness in improving their system and platform. Not to forget their scheduled system update, which CS GO update has to catch up to speed.

Meanwhile, third party sites such as ​DownDetector could be used to  check if ​the CSGO servers are down. Sites like DownDetector compile fan reports of issues regarding servers. Each site is a great tool to see if anyone is encountering the same issues you’re having. Also, be sure to use other social media sites to track on the server status Steam is currently facing.

For now, we can only hope for a solution from Valve that could eradicate the server issue completely ⁠— and hopefully, that’s sooner rather than later.