Counter-Strike 2 announcement and release may be close at hand

Originally posted on Video Games on Sports Illustrated
By Marco Wutz | Last updated 3/6/23

Valve might have a new version of Counter-Strike up its sleeve, which could be announced this month and immediately enter a playable beta stage. Leaks from a recent NVIDIA drivers update and a report by esports journalist Richard Lewis hint towards an imminent announcement of the new game, which might simply be called Counter-Strike 2.

According to Lewis, this new version of the popular competitive first-person shooter has been worked on by some time at Valve and may get a beta release in the ongoing month. That would explain a recent lack of substantial updates for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, the currently supported version of the series and most popular game on Steam.

Lewis’ report seems to verify discoveries in NVIDIA’s latest drivers, which support two hitherto unknown applications: csgo2.exe and cs2.exe. NVIDIA introducing support for these two apps could definitely point towards an imminent release of the software.

Counter-Strike 2 will reportedly run on Valve’s own Source 2 engine – not a surprise in the least – and is supposed to feature servers that would bring it up to par with Riot Games’ Valorant at 128 tick.

“The big priority is getting this out and then polishing it, fixing any bugs and bringing it up to the level people expect from CS,” Lewis wrote.

It’s not quite clear how this change of guards would work exactly, though the switch of fellow competitive Valve title Dota 2 to Source 2 may serve as a blueprint. In that case, the community won’t have to fear any drastic gameplay or economy changes, as their hard-earned skin collections will likely remain untouched and their built-up muscle-memory can still carry players to victory.

Valve has not yet commented on these rumors.

This article first appeared on Video Games on Sports Illustrated and was syndicated with permission.

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