Best CS2 DM Servers – ProSettings.net

If you’re a serious CS2 player, getting in your DM (deathmatch) sessions is your bread and butter. It can be a way to warm up, improve your skills, or quite simply a way to relax without committing to a full competitive game. They’re the CS2 equivalent of playing catch or passing a ball around in practice sessions. We took a look at the most popular CS2 DM servers, spent some time on each one, and have come up with a list of your best options. Let’s dive in.

Our Testing

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First things first: we’re not listing individual server IPs here. Rather, we evaluated DM providers such as XPlay, WarmupServer, and the likes. We went onto various different servers of each provider, and evaluated server stability, map variety, opponent skill levels, and so on.

Our goal is to help you find a DM server provider that suits you best, and to weed out the ones that aren’t even worth connecting to.

XPlay.gg

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Server Setup and Performance

Before connecting to an XPlay server, you need to download some additional sound effects and textures. That is totally normal and is VAC-safe. Once you’re in, you simply select a weapon and get to fragging.

Most of the servers we tested ran very smoothly, and we had no connection or lag issues during our sessions. After a kill, your ammo replenishes and your HP goes up a little, which helps with keeping the flow going. Satisfying dink sounds and old-school ‘killing spree’ announcements help spice things up a little, though you can obviously disable those if you want.

Features

What’s cool with XPlay is that you can try out skins. If you log in to Steam via their website, you can use different knives and gun skins during your DM sessions. That’s a cool extra touch if you want some variety or you want to try certain skins out. Free users are limited to skins with pretty bad conditions, however. If you want Factory New skins, you’ll have to go Premium.

In addition to this, XPlay also offers challenges for their various modes. In DM, this could be to kill 5 players in a row without dying, or to make 100 kills. Completing these challenges gives you coin rewards, which you can then trade for skins on their website. It’s a cool and completely optional extra.

During matches, the server also often starts a killstreak minigame. Players compete to get the highest killstreak, and the winner gets a coin prize.

Gameplay Experience

XPlay lets users see how high the average FaceIt level of players in a given server is. This can be a handy tool to gauge how difficult the opposition is, but it’s obviously just an approximation. We’ve seen level 2 players go completely ballistic, as well as level 10 players who couldn’t hit the proverbial side of a barn.

In terms of gameplay, it’s very solid. As mentioned, the servers are mostly stable and reliable, which is good.

One thing we didn’t like is that some servers can get really ‘cheesy’. When multiple players are attempting to complete a crazy mission and there’s a killstreak game going on (causing people to camp out) it can get quite annoying to find fair and fun duels. Additionally, there doesn’t seem to be a cap on the amount of AWPs in any given match. So if many players are using the AWP, it can become a frustrating game of spawning and dying to entrenched AWPs all over again. This AWPing thing is something that stood out compared to the other servers we tested.

The above is not all that common, though. Most of our sessions were fun, fair, and engaging.

CyberShoke

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Server Setup and Performance

Just like with many community DM servers, CyberShoke requires you to download additional sounds and texture packs. Don’t worry about that, as it’s totally safe to do so.

Upon entering the server, you get a smooth performing server with tons of duels in a short amount of time. What’s good to know is that CyberShoke offers servers of varying sizes. If you’re not keen on getting shot at the moment you spawn, you can always go for a smaller server with 16-18 spots instead of 24. During our testing, those smaller servers were either full or completely empty, so we mostly tested on 24-player servers.

Features

CyberShoke, just like XPlay, offers a skin changer and missions that you can complete for on-site currency. You can then exchange this currency for CS2 skins. The mission system is a little bit more elaborate and in-depth than what you find on XPlay, but there is a catch. All of this is locked behind a subscription system. So, unless you’re willing to pay up for their Lite ($2.00/mo) or Premium ($5.50/mo) subscription, you don’t have access to any of it.

Obviously, all of the above is not required for a good DM experience, but it can be handy to know.

Gameplay Experience

CyberShoke is a very popular website, so their various servers are always well-populated. Even less popular gamemodes like pistol DM usually have at least one or two servers with enough people to get a good session in. That’s a big bonus if you want to focus on a specific aspect of your gunplay, and something that most other websites can’t really offer.

Once you’re in the game, everything runs smoothly, and it’s easy to understand how to switch weapons etc.

One thing we did notice is that the lower max player count servers are often either completely full or completely empty. Because of that, we often played on 24-player servers, and that often got a bit too hectic.

Obviously, you shouldn’t play DM to ‘win’, and your K/D is of no importance in a DM session. But getting killed instantly five times in a row without even having the chance to look around can get a bit annoying. We know that it’s a bit of a subjective thing, but for this reason we would recommend sticking to the lower player count servers if you can. The spawns on the larger ones don’t seem to be all that optimal.

Lastly, we also noticed a comparatively higher amount of fishy players on CyberShoke servers than on other servers. Players with a 3.0+ K/D that are frequently landing shots that even pros would be excited with, for example. This could have been a coincidence, but it’s worth mentioning in a review like this.

WarmupServer

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Server Setup and Performance

WarmupServer requires a small download before entering their servers for the first time. After that, you get into a very clean server environment. Servers run smooth, provided you’re on one with a good ping of course.

Contrary to what you see with a lot of other DM servers, WarmupServer does not offer any ‘shenanigans’. The experience here is pure and simple. No skin changers, no missions, and no special textures on the maps. Their most popular servers are their ‘MultiCFG’ servers. These switch between rifles, pistols, forcebuy weapons, and so on. They also mix in some short headshot only sections.

Features

As we mentioned, WarmupServer servers do not do any extras. You get into a server, get to fragging, and that’s it. This is ideal for players who want to focus on DM only, and do not want to get bogged down with skin changers, missions, and the likes.

Gameplay Experience

Most of WarmupServer’s popular servers are 24-player servers. This has the potential to create some extremely hectic matches, but we found that the spawn system that WarmupServer employs does its job pretty nicely.

In terms of actual gameplay, this felt like the most ‘tryhard’ experience. Whether this is related or not is something we can’t say for sure, but we also saw the most active (and former) pros on their servers. If you’re looking for a challenge when it comes to DM’ing and you want a distraction-free environment, this is a good choice.

One thing we really did not love was the VIP system. WarmupServer’s servers are often very full, so getting into one isn’t all that easy. And once we did, we had multiple instances where we were almost insta-kicked because a VIP (paying player) was coming into the server. On top of that, some servers are quite simply not open to non-paying users during some days.

Obviously, servers have the right to ask for money, but we didn’t have any issues with being a F2P player on any of the other servers. It might have been a coincidence that we got hit with so many kicks during our testing, but it happened enough to make us take note of it.

Valve DM Servers

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Obviously, a CS2 DM server article wouldn’t be complete without mentioning Valve’s official DM servers. In short, though, we do not recommend those, as they are not optimized for competitive players. The spawn protection, for instance, can ruin many fair duels. Furthermore, spawns themselves are not optimized (leading to long stretches with no duels), respawning takes way too long, and there often aren’t enough players in a match to keep it engaging.

Lastly, it also has a lot of casual players. There’s nothing wrong with that at all, but since it’s an official Valve gamemode, there’s tons of players who want to ‘win’ the DM by cheesing with automatic shotguns and the likes. In community DM servers, the vast majority of players are just there to improve and warm up, not necessarily to ‘win’ the match.

Valve DM is fine for casual gameplay, but we really wouldn’t recommend it for any sort of serious practice or warming up.

Conclusion

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If you’re new to this whole DM thing, there’s one thing you need to know: don’t use Valve’s servers. Other than that, it’s basically down to what you prefer. Do you like a more casual and relaxed experience, or do you like to go sweaty without any distractions? The servers in this article all offer something special, so it’s up to you to decide which one you want to use as your main practice and warmup stop.