Valve’s on the precipice of launching a major update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, according to a report from esports journalist Richard Lewis (via Forbes). Sources close to the situation tell Lewis that Valve could finally release a new version of the game on the company’s Source 2 engine as early as this month.
Lewis, who has broken big CS:GO stories in the past, says he’s told that Valve already enlisted a group of professional CS:GO players to try out the updated game at the company’s Seattle headquarters. Migrating the game to the Source 2 engine, which is used by some of Valve’s other games, like Dota 2 and Half-Life: Alyx, could allow for better performance and graphics.
That’s apparently not the only upgrade Valve’s been working on. Lewis adds that the “new” CS:GO could come with an improved matchmaking system that more closely resembles the third-party platforms where players can find and join CS:GO matches, like FACEIT or ESEA. Valve’s also expected to increase the tick rate of the servers used by the game from 64 to 128, potentially making for less latency during online matches.
It’s hard to believe that over 10 years after the release of CS:GO (and over 20 since the release of the original title) that Valve would spring a huge update on us with little to no fanfare. But this isn’t the only evidence of a possible upgrade. Last week, u/DAOWAce on Reddit discovered a suspect pair of executable files, named “csgos2.exe” and “cs2.exe,” included in recent drivers released by Nvidia.
While it may sound like Valve’s releasing an entirely new game, Twitter users @gabefollower and @aquaismissing explain that this could simply indicate that Valve’s moving the game over to the Source 2 engine and that developers may have been a bit lazy with the file-naming. We hopefully won’t have to wait too much longer to see what the so-called Counter-Strike 2 is all about, though, as Lewis says the game’s “about ready to go.”
