Why a CS2 demo won't download or has expired

01How long CS2 demos are available

Valve doesn't publish a fixed window. Reports range from about a week or two up to roughly a month after the match. Treat it as a few weeks at most, and download the demos you care about right after you play.

There's a second limit inside the game. Watch → Your Matches only lists your last 8 matches, because that's all Valve's Game Coordinator provides. Play eight more games and an older match drops off that list, even if its demo still exists.

02Why a CS2 demo won't download

• The demo expired. Valve deleted it from its servers. Nothing on your side fixes that.
• The match isn't in your last 8. It's gone from Your Matches, but Steam's match history or the match's share code may still get you the file.
• It downloaded, but you can't find it. Matchmaking demos land in the replays folder. See where CS2 demos are saved.

03Other ways to get the demo

1. 01In CS2, open Watch → Your Matches and hit the download button on the match. Once it's downloaded you can watch it from there.
2. 02If the match isn't listed, open your Steam profile → Games → Counter-Strike 2 → Personal Game Data and find it in the match history tabs. Recent matches have a Download GOTV Replay link. You get a compressed .dem.bz2; extract it to get the .dem.
3. 03If you have the match's share code, open the console and run csgo_download_match with it. That downloads the match and starts playback.

csgo_download_match CSGO-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx

All three pull the same demo from Valve. If Valve has already deleted it, none of them will work. Need the code? See how to get your CS2 share code.

04Can you recover an expired CS2 demo?

No. Once Valve deletes a matchmaking demo there's no copy to request and no command that brings it back. What's left is anything you recorded on your own side while you played:

• Steam Game Recording, if Record in background was on in the Steam client's Settings → Game Recording.
• NVIDIA or AMD instant replay, or Xbox Game Bar's "record what happened", if they were already running.
• A POV demo you made yourself with record (see the record command).

Background recorders only capture while they're on. If nothing was running, the play is gone. More in saving a CS2 clip after you forgot to record.

05Why an old demo won't play after an update

A demo you've downloaded to your PC doesn't expire. It stays in the folder as long as you keep it. But after big CS2 updates, older demos can stop playing in the current build of the game. The file is still there; the game just won't play it.

That's the catch with keeping demos to watch later. If there's a frag you want to keep, turn it into a video while the demo still plays. An MP4 doesn't care which CS2 build you're on.

06How to stop losing plays to expired demos

The manual fix is discipline: download every match you might want right after you play, then clip it before the next big update. Most people forget, and the window closes.

killcam.gg does it for you. Sign in through Steam and link your match history once with your game authentication code and a share code. New matches are found automatically within minutes of finishing. We read the demo from Valve and clip your plays on our servers, so your top play from every match is already an MP4 long before the demo expires. Nothing to install and no game running.