The confirmation didn’t take long, just a few hours ago we were talking about a hypothetical Counter-Strike 2, which is the result of several related brands that were recently registered by Valve, and now the company has confirmed it and that too with a very good news for current CS:GO players. It still doesn’t have a specific date, but it has a season (and we won’t have to wait long), a beta that starts sooner than you’d think, and while Valve has a few surprises in store for its launch, it’s also already advanced some of the latest news. The best of this new generation of one of the most successful shooters of all time.

How could it be otherwise, Counter-Strike 2 will mean a significant leap in technical terms, which in turn will be reflected in significant improvements in the game compared to the current version. for this purpose CS2 is built with the Source 2 graphics engineintroduced in 2015 as a replacement for the veteran Source from 2004, which is the same used by the company’s other titles such as DOTA 2 and Half-Life: Alyx, among others.

We await further news from Valve, one of the most notable news of Counter-Strike 2 is that smoke grenades are now dynamic volume objects which interact with the environment and react to lighting, gunshots and explosions. And what does it mean? They will be context sensitive and therefore can be shot through by bullets and create holes in the smoke. They will also be affected by other grenades, such as incendiary or stun grenades, which will change their shape and duration. Another novelty is the removal of tick rate servers, i.e. the frequency with which information between players and the server is updated. Now the game will use partial updates to allow smoother and more accurate communication between clients and server and eliminate issues like lag or peeker advantage.

As I said at the beginning, there is very good news for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players, and the first is that Counter-Strike 2 it will contain all the maps we already know from CS:GO, although the jump to Source 2 will translate into a huge improvement in the visuals, as you can see in the image below, as well as in the interactive examples posted by Valve on the games official page. Additionally, in some cases the map improvements will not be purely aesthetic.

Another good news for those coming from CS:GO is that Counter-Strike 2 will be a free update for those who will also keep their weapons, skins and other digital assets. The jump to Counter-Strike 2 will be completely free for them and, moreover, it will not mean the loss of everything they have accumulated over the years in Global Offensive.

Valve announced this Counter-Strike 2 will be released in the summer of 2023, although he did not specify the exact date. However, the most impatient players will be able to try the game starting today, as a closed beta has been enabled for a limited number of users, which will expand over time. To access the beta, players will need to have CS:GO installed on their computer and request an invite via the game’s official website.