According to a new report, Valve's immensely popular multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike 2 has already made a staggering amount of money in 2024, and the year is nowhere near done yet.
Per GameDiscoverCo's Simon Carless, Counter-Strike 2 racked up an astonishing $610 million in the first half of 2024. It's not hard to imagine the game breaking a billion dollars in revenue before the year is through.
It's a pretty big leap from Counter-Strike to the next game on GameDiscoverCo's list, Helldivers 2, which racked up "just" $458 million. An impressive number by any metric, but it probably could have been even higher if that whole PlayStation ID debacle hadn't happened.
It's another fairly big leap from Helldivers 2 to Palworld's $378 million, which secures it a bronze medal, with PUBG: Battlegrounds and Apex Legends bringing up fourth and fifth with $276 million and $159 million, respectively.
The first single-player game (although it does also support multiplayer) on the list is Baldur's Gate 3, which raked in $127 million for the first half of 2024. That's not bad at all considering it was released last year.
Predictably enough, Dota 2 is in seventh place with $119 million, although Dragon's Dogma 2's eighth-place $108 million finish is something of a surprise, especially given that it's beaten Elden Ring, which sits in ninth with $100 million.
Finally, rounding out the top ten spot is Destiny 2, which made $91 million in the first half of the year. That's probably not going to serve as much of a balm to the 200-plus staff let go from developer Bungie last month, though.
If you're interested, here's a rundown of the rest of the top 20 list as reported by GameDiscoverCo and Simon Carless.
- 11. Manor Lords - $56 million
- 12. Last Epoch - $54 million
- 13. Enshrouded - $49 million
- 14. Naraka: Bladepoint - $48 million
- 15. Ghost of Tsushima Director's Cut - $48 million
- 16. Warframe - $46 million
- 17. Call of Duty HQ - $41 million
- 18. Granblue Fantasy: Relink - $40 million
- 19. Tekken 8 - $40 million
- 20. War Thunder - $36 million
Steam is also cracking down on link spam in store descriptions
Elsewhere in Steam news, Valve has also detailed a new set of changes coming to Steam store page descriptions in order to combat excessive link spam.
The changes essentially limit what it's possible to include in a Steam game's store page description; publishers will no longer be able to include links to other websites, for instance, nor will they be able to include "embedded imagery that mimics Steam store UI or buttons".
Also prohibited are "images, links, or widgets pointing to other games on Steam". Starting from early September, an update for Steam will be rolled out that will hide instances of URLs being included in games' descriptions or "other text section[s]".
Valve says it doesn't like "store pages linking prominently off to other store pages", and that the changes are also intended to nudge publishers towards using Steam's new demo features rather than releasing a separate "Prologue" for their games and linking to the main game from that prologue's store page.
You're unlikely to notice a huge amount of changes when this new Steam update drops, but it should at least make navigating Steam a bit easier. Stay tuned for more.
