The Counter-Strike 2 limited test beta launched on March 22. Since then, Valve has been implementing new features, renovating old ones, and trying to balance it all.
With Valve being Valve, that process has taken a while. Six whole months of limited testing may have finally brought us to a semi-official CS2 release date. Yet after all this time and all the delays, Sept. 27 still somehow feels as if Valve is rushing it.
With a promised summer 2023 CS2 launch, it was inevitable that the community would start asking for the game as soon as they saw the sun two days in a row, especially those without access to the limited test beta. Valve doesn’t play that game. The publisher just went about its business—an update here, an update there, biding its time. And so the months passed by, summer came and went, and after months of waiting, fans might finally get what they’ve wanted—kind of.
“What are you doing next Wednesday?” That’s what the official CS2 account tweeted on Sept. 20, giving us the closest thing to a release date without actually announcing it. It would be downright sadistic on Valve’s part to not release CS2 on Sept. 27 after that, but we’ll assume even the notorious video game publishing sloth won’t dare do that to its fans. Our issue isn’t with another potential delay—quite the opposite. After months of stoically resisting the pressure of launching CS2, Valve now appears to be rushing the game out the door.
There has been some criticism thrown CS2’s way since the very beginning, mostly revolving around its heavier movement. And the number of problems players are bringing up in recent weeks is actually going up, not down.
Valve is forcing 64 tick rates on everyone, and people don’t like that. Holding an angle in CS2 is borderline impossible, and people don’t like that. Valve can’t handle cheaters in the beta, and surprise, surprise—people don’t like that. Though the opinion of pro players isn’t the be-all, end-all of CS2 debates, their current consensus that the game isn’t ready should not be ignored.
Fans of a game or a series will always try to compare a new entry to what they are familiar with, and there’s no doubt some in the community are doing that with CS:GO and CS2. That’s why we want to stress that CS2 does not need to be CS:GO 2.0 to get our stamp of approval; it simply needs to be ready.
Unless Valve pulls out the magic wand and fixes every major issue at hand with a day one patch, we can’t help but be baffled that a game entering its seventh month of beta testing is seemingly inexplicably being rushed out during a period that’s seen it criticized more than ever before.
