After multiple community leaks strongly hinting at the upcoming arrival of Valve’s next-generation engine, Source 2, in Counter-Strike, veteran journalist Richard Lewis has reported on his Substack more to the same effect, quoting anonymous sources about a tentative launch with a beta product called Counter-Strike 2 expected to launch by April 1.
Lewis quotes sources with knowledge of the development process as saying the game was “about ready to go” and that pro players have already tested the title. His report also states the dev team’s primary goal was to ship the product “and then polishing it, fixing any bugs and bringing it up to the level people expect from CS.”
The rumors of Source 2 coming to CS:GO are almost as old as the engine itself, and they’ve been a recurring theme in the community discussions ever since the engine was rolled out for Valve’s other big title, Dota 2.
Last June, CS:GO content creator voo strongly hinted at some sort of a content creator playtest event and that he was invited to Valve’s headquarters alongside fellow personalities TheWarOwl and 2kliksphilip.
Though there have been many leaks and rumors about the developers’ work behind the scenes on the new version, including a July 2022 reveal that Shoots, Inferno, Lake, Overpass, Shortdust and Italy were being playtested on the upgraded engine, no official communication or specific timeline has come to light.
Though there is still nothing from Valve apart from a cryptic update to the Twitter banner over at @csgo, the fact that NVIDIA’s latest drivers listed support for “csgos2.exe” and “cs2.exe” served as the most tangible third-party sign of what is to come.
The long-running first-person shooter franchise has gone from strength to strength in recent times, repeatedly beating its concurrent player count record and reaching larger-than-ever audiences in tournament play.
It remains to be seen how these changes will affect the esports scene of the franchise and how quickly the playerbase will migrate to the new version.
