Counter-Strike 2 Could Reportedly Be Announced Soon

With regular batch of fixes, 2012 multiplayer tactical first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Global Offensive by developer/publisher Valve Corporation remains one of the most popular PC games on gaming platform Steam and eSports scene.

There have been lots of leaks and rumors for years regarding a new version of CS: GO on Source engine but nothing ever came out. More recently, an insider report claims that Counter-Strike 2 is likely to be announced soon alongside Beta.

According to eSports journalist Richard Lewis, a new version of Counter-Strike was reportedly in works for a while and will release soon. It is currently under working title "Counter-Strike 2" and has a planned date for Beta launch this month.

Lewis claims that CS2 reportedly entered limited tested at Valve's headquarters in Seattle and is almost ready to go. Valve team prioritized making this game and people involved in previous CS series entries have overseen the entire sequel.

This explains why some major issues with CS: GO have long been pushed aside as dev team was busy working on Counter-Strike 2. Right now, Valve wants to get this out and polish or fix issues later while bringing it up to a certain standard.

Additional detail reveals that CS2 will be on Source 2 engine to improve graphical fidelity as well as optimization. This may cost performance on low-end PCs despite Valve's attitude of allowing players on regular gaming rigs to enjoy games.

Twitter user @gabefollower shared interesting findings on NVIDIA drivers related to Counter-Strike 2 earlier.

Something weird just happened. Latest NVIDIA drivers introduced support for unknown app executables called "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". Why project is called Counter-Strike 2 and what are you cooking @csgo? https://t.co/U9YKlAjwgy pic.twitter.com/PU8Op9uGLq

— ‎Gabe Follower 2 (@gabefollower) March 1, 2023

Player-community has been wondering whether Valve would bring official servers to 128 tick to match its rival shooter Valorant. Insider sources confirm that this feature will be ready at launch of upcoming Beta program for CS2 this March.

Lewis' claims are also backed by latest NVIDIA drivers that introduced support for two unknown executables, "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". They are probably linked to Counter-Strike 2 and were implemented by NVIDIA ahead of beta launch.

Valve also plans to include a reworked match-making system, so any third-party services will be completely unnecessary. CS: GO competitive players usually have to sign up for services such as FACEIT to evade uneven match-making issues.

Counter-Strike franchise still remains very popular across premier eSports events globally and a new version will only create more hype. However, whether CS2 will be a replacement of CS: GO or will run alongside has not been announced.