"How did I shut down that clutch?" "Why did I die at that corner?" In CS2, there are plenty of moments you only get curious about after the match ends. Fortunately, Counter-Strike leaves behind a demo (.dem) file when a match ends, letting you rewatch the entire game exactly as it happened. This article covers, in order, how to grab and play CS2 demos, key features like free perspective and X-ray, GOTV for reviewing pro matches, and how to save a demo as video to share with a friend.
First, one concept to nail down. A CS2 demo isn't a "recorded video"; it's "record data that recreates the match exactly." Every player's position, shots, and utility usage are stored as coordinates, so when you play it back you can freely change perspectives and adjust the speed. Being a recreation rather than a video is the demo's strength, and also the reason the "making a video" step we'll explain later is needed.
Where do you get demos? The Watch tab
The most basic route to getting CS2 demos is the Watch tab in the game's main menu. Launch CS2, go to the Watch tab from the top menu, and your recent competitive and Premier matches appear under "Your Matches." Hit the download button next to a match and that game's demo file downloads.
One thing to watch out for is the retention period. The match demos shown in the Watch tab are only kept for a certain period, so if there's a match you want to rewatch, it's safer to grab it ahead of time while it's still on the list. Once it ages off the list, you can no longer download that match's demo.
Where are demo files stored?
Demos downloaded from the Watch tab are saved with the .dem extension inside the CS2 install folder. They usually go in your Steam library's game folder (under the csgo directory), and backing up this file lets you keep it yourself even after the Watch tab retention period passes. Keep in mind, though, that demos can be affected by the game version (patch), so after a major update older demos may not play correctly.
Two ways to play a demo
There are two ways to play a demo you've downloaded. One is to hit play right in the Watch tab UI, and the other is to pull it up with a command in the developer console. For beginners the Watch tab UI is easier; if you want to quickly open one specific file, the console method is handier.
Method 1: play straight from the Watch tab
Select the match you want from the Watch tab's match list and you'll enter the playback screen. A demo that's finished downloading can be played right away, and you control pause, playback speed, and seeking with the playback controls at the bottom of the screen. There are no commands to memorize, so it's the most intuitive.
Method 2: the developer console playdemo command
You can also open one directly from the console. First, turn on the developer console (Enable Developer Console) in settings, then open it with the default hotkey, the tilde (~) key. In the console, load the demo file with the playdemo command. For example, if the file is named match.dem, you'd type something like playdemo match into the console. If the file is in the default demo folder, the name alone opens it; if it's elsewhere, include the relative path.
What you can do inside a demo
The real value of CS2 demo playback is that you can "pick the match apart however you like." Rather than just watching start to finish, you can change perspective and speed to analyze the exact moments you want from any angle.
- Free perspective (freecam): move the camera anywhere on the map to look down from above or zoom in on a specific corner.
- Player perspective: switch to the first-person view of any player you want, not just yourself but enemies and teammates, to see exactly what they saw.
- Playback speed and seeking: fast-forward or slow it down, and drag the timeline to jump to a specific round or moment.
- X-ray (see through walls): show the position of players behind walls as silhouettes, so you can see at a glance where both teams were.
Reviewing "why you died" with X-ray
X-ray is especially useful in demo analysis. Because you can see "the enemy's position behind a wall," which you could never know during an actual match, you can objectively confirm where and how an enemy was waiting the moment you died, and whether your utility actually pressured them. There's no better tool for fixing the habit of dying repeatedly in the same spot. If you also play position-heavy FPS games like Valorant or Rainbow Six Siege, this demo-reviewing habit carries straight over to help your skill in those games too.
Reviewing pro matches with GOTV demos
Demos aren't just for your own matches. Tournaments and pro matches are distributed as GOTV demos, and you can play these GOTV demos in CS2 just the same to pick them apart with free perspective and X-ray. You can learn from your favorite pro by following their view to see where they stand in a given situation and what order they use their utility in. Being able to directly check the positioning and crosshair placement that the broadcast doesn't show makes them highly useful as learning material for improving.
Turning a demo into a video (mp4)
This is where a lot of people get stuck. If you try to send a friend a demo or upload it to YouTube or social media by handing over the .dem file as-is, the person receiving it also needs CS2 and has to meet the same retention and version conditions to open it. On top of that, as mentioned, a demo is recreation data rather than a video, so there's no built-in feature to convert a .dem file straight to mp4.
In the end, the standard way to save a demo as video is to "record the screen while playing the demo." Put the demo on, set it to the perspective and speed you want, then pull an mp4 with a screen recorder, and you get an ordinary video that even people without CS2 can watch. With this method you can save anything to video as-is, whether it's an analysis screen with X-ray on or a clean ace moment.
Automatic clips of just the best moments with DOR
The catch is that if you record an entire long demo, you still end up having to find and cut the best moments yourself. DOR is a free game recording program. Install it and it automatically detects when a game launches, records in the background, and cuts key moments like kills and aces into short clips on its own. It uses NVIDIA NVENC hardware encoding, so the in-game frame hit is small too.
Use them together: DOR gathers clips automatically from live matches, and for a specific scene you discover during demo review, play the demo and record it to save it as video. With no need to hit a record button or memorize a hotkey, just launching the game leaves highlights piled up, so the regret of "I missed the best moment" fades away.
In summary
CS2 demos are a powerful review tool: grab them from the Watch tab, play them via the Watch UI or the console playdemo command, and pick the match apart however you like with free perspective, playback speed, and X-ray. They're affected by retention periods and patch versions, so grab important matches ahead of time. Since a demo is recreation data rather than a video, it doesn't convert directly to mp4, so to save it as video you have to record the playback screen. The thing that handles this recording and clipping automatically is DOR. Check the recommended settings and automatic clip examples on the page for the games you play most: Counter-Strike, Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege.
