Fans of the tactical shooter genre have been waiting for a new installment in the Counter-Strike series, and rumor has it that Valve is testing what might be CS:GO 2 right now.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released in 2012, more than a decade ago, and fans have been awaiting a new update to the series with bated breath. According to recent and sudden rumors, Valve has been testing a huge new iteration of Counter-Strike since at least December of 2022.
So what does this new evolution in the series mean for fans of CS:GO, and what can they expect?
Moving to a new version of Counter-Strike, especially an entirely new game, would present massive obstacles for both developer Valve and the Counter-Strike community.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has a massive in-game economy relating to skins, stickers, and other cosmetic prizes that has grown to be one of the biggest internal markets in a video game over the course of a decade. A completely new game would threaten to wipe away all of this progress, but it seems that Valve has already considered this and won’t be going quite that far.
Content creator Gabe Follower, who already ported GS:GO to Source 2 himself, claimed he has a reliable source who says that Valve has been testing CS:GO on the Source 2 engine for several months.
This isn’t a new Counter-Strike game — it would simply be an upgrade for CS:GO from Source 1 to Source 2.
In many ways, it would be as close as CS:GO could get to an entirely new installment without radically changing the gameplay or cosmetics market. Gabe Follower explained it wouldn’t be a new game, simply a migration of the existing game to a new engine.
For now, these are merely rumors but it would make sense for Valve to look for modernization to make to a game that is over a decade old. These reports have been echoed by Richard Lewis, who says the new version of the game could release as early as within the month.
With two promising sources confirming the same information, a new engine under CS:GO’s hood seems incredibly likely.
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