Mere weeks after release, Counter-Strike 2 is now the worst rated game that Valve has ever released. What has happened?
As reported by PCGamesN, the game received the dubious distinction when the recent spate of mixed to negative reviews on Steam took the game down to a mixed rating.
Now, it does need to be said that Valve made arrangement so that Counter-Strike 2 ‘s listing sits on where Counter-Strike Global Offensive used to be. So, the overall rating on the Valve page is somewhat misleading. It includes the old reviews that approved of Counter-Strike Global Offensive, that are now made to look like they are reviewing the new game, Counter-Strike 2.
With all that clarified, Counter-Strike 2 ‘s mixed rating puts it lower than all the Half-Life games, the other Counter-Strike games, Team Fortress, and Day of Defeat.
Data also confirmed that the negative ratings started coming in as soon as the game got released. In other words, the collective bad sentiment really comes from genuine bad reception for the game itself. The data does not support the idea that the game could have gotten review bombed, either well in advance of its release, or after the fact because someone started a review bombing run days later.
There are multiple issues for the bad reception. For one, the move from Counter-Strike Global Offensive to Counter-Strike 2 was abrupt, changing up the modes, gamefeel, and other aspects of the experience.
On a considerably more serious end, Valve did not wait until all the skins and content fans earned in Counter-Strike Global Offensive were successfully transferred to Counter-Strike 2. For many players, that represents potentially hundreds of dollars in cosmetics like hats and other things. They played hours with these cosmetics, and were likely expecting that they would carry over.
One particular issue reported by PCGamesN was Counter-Strike 2 ‘s faulty hit detection, a very technical issue, but one that had a real impact on how much gamers enjoyed it. With hitboxes now no longer aligned to where they were supposed to be, players frequently missed their shots where they should have gotten them.
And then, there are issues with cheaters, but that is somewhat normal at this point, as much as that isn’t desirable for the industry.
Unfortunately for Valve, their attempt to bring back their multiplayer online game franchise, by dropping the most anticipated sequel for years, has had a rough start. Valve will have to put the work in to fix issues like the hit-detection errors, to even just start to set things right with fans.
