How to Watch FACEIT Demos in CS2?

Watching demos is one of the easiest ways to quickly improve your game. You can watch your own demos to find the mistakes you typically make, the demos of the enemy team to see which of your moves proved to be most effective, and the demos of pro players to compare their gameplay with yours, find new utility lineups, record timings, and more.

Today, we offer you a step-by-step guide of how to watch demos on FACEIT, as this platform is one of the most convenient ways to do so. In this article, you will learn how to download and watch a FACEIT demo, how to unzip it, how to play it, and more.

Download the Demo

First of all, go to your or another player’s profile on FACEIT and select the Stats tab.

There, you will see all your (or their) recent matches.

Pick any match that was played in the last 30 days and click on it to download the replay. The Matchroom will open in a new tab.

In the Matchroom, go to the Overview tab and click "Watch Demo" in the middle of the screen. An archive with the demo will be automatically downloaded to your PC.

Unzip the Demo

Go to your downloads folder and find the archive with the demo. To open it, you will need archive management software. If by some miracle you don't have one installed, we recommend using WinRAR, the popular and easy-to-use app you can get for free.

Once ready, open the archive and extract the file to the CS2 installation directory, which is usually located at:

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Counter-Strike Global Offensive\game\csgo

Rename the Demo (Optional)

FACEIT replays usually come with weird names, so you can rename them for convenience. Just right-click on the file and select "Rename". Enter any name, but make sure to leave .dem at the end of it.

Watch the Demo in CS2

To watch the FACEIT replay, launch the game, open the console, and type ‘playdemo #’ but replace "#" with the actual name of your demo file, for example, playdemo niko_ancient.

If you don't have the console enabled or don't know how to open it, first, go to CS2 launch options in Steam and add the “-console” command. Then, go to CS2 settings, and type "console" in the search box. Select the “Toggle Console” field and assign any suitable key to open the console and start watching the demo.

FACEIT Demo Viewer Controls

When watching a demo, you can press SHIFT + F2 two times to open the viewer interface. Using the panel, you can change playback speed, jump to rounds and time stamps, watch highlights, move back and forth to double-check or skip something, and more. The interface is pretty intuitive, so you will likely get comfortable using it in the first 5 minutes or so.

That's it for today. Now that you know how to watch FACEIT demos, we wish you good luck with your analysis. Feel free to ask questions in the comments if you need help, and make sure to read other articles on our blog.