We now have word that Valve is nearly done working on and is planning to release Counter-Strike 2, the long awaited potential sequel to their seminal multiplayer shooter, Counter-Strike.
The original Counter-Strike started life as a simple Half Life 2 mod. Its creators, Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, were college students who conceived of a multiplayer game using the first Source engine where you could play either terrorists or counter-terrorists facing off against each other.
Valve would eventually buy the Counter-Strike IP, and hire Le and Cliffe, right as they were on the fifth beta. Counter-Strike would see its first official non-beta release on September 2000. Interestingly enough, Le was already working on a tentative Counter-Strike 2, or rather, a Counter-Strike 2.0 at this time. Valve cancelled that project, and Le left Valve to pursue work with other game companies. His most recently released work was on multiplayer survival game Rust, by Facepunch studios.
Nvidia published a GPU update that included files referencing a Counter-Strike 2. Shortly after, journalist Richard Lewis conferred with his sources that Counter-Strike 2 is real, and a beta is coming this month. As reported by Dexerto, this is what we know about the soon-to-be-announced Counter-Strike 2.
The biggest rumor connected with Counter-Strike 2 is that it is updating to Source 2, Valve’s latest game engine. Valve is using Source2 in their newer games, including DOTA2 and Half-Life: Alyx. It only stands to make sense that Valve would be updating engines, as Counter-Strike: Source itself was an upgrade to the first Source engine. The ongoing current game in the franchise, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, originally released in 2012, and has started showing its age.
However, many current fans may not remember that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was also an update that enabled Valve to port the game to the consoles PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, as well as Linux.
Valve’s decision to update Counter-Strike yet again hints at other changes they could be bringing to the game. Dexerto opines that Valve will not get rid of skins, of which many players have amassed thousands. On our end, we believe it is possible that Valve is planning to bring Counter-Strike back to consoles, the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S, and possibly even the Nintendo Switch.
Perhaps more interesting is the possibility that Valve will use Counter-Strike 2 to entice more gamers to buy a Steam Deck. Valve may not necessarily give favoritism to their platform, but if Valve can pull off a seamless online experience for Counter-Strike 2 on the go, that could revolutionize their gameplay experience.
Other changes could come to their monetization and other game design details. It’s likely too early to speculate on any of that since Valve hasn’t indicated any interest in changing business models of their current games.
If Counter-Strike 2 as it has been described here is coming, the beta will be starting sometime between March 2023 to April 1, 2023.
