Valve shared more information about the upcoming Counter-Strike 2, including the fact that skins and bans will carry over from CS:GO to the new version of Valve’s competitive multiplayer first-person shooter. Counter-Strike players will therefore keep some of the progress they made on Valve’s FPS over the past decade.

Valve unveiled Counter-Strike 2 in a surprise announcement earlier today. This revamped version of Valve’s FPS series keeps the core elements that made Counter-Strike popular while bringing various gameplay and graphical improvements. Counter-Strike 2 will run on Source 2, the game engine used to create Half-Life: Alyx and the Steam Deck tech demo Aperture Desk Job. In a series of videos, Valve highlighted some of the key changes coming to Counter-Strike 2, including the new responsive smoke grenades, the tick rates improvement to make matches less laggy, as well as the redesign of popular maps such as Dust 2, Nuke, and Inferno. Counter-Strike 2 is expected to release in the summer of 2023, with a Limited Test version already available for a selection of players.

In the FAQ section of Counter-Strike 2’s Steam page, Valve stated that all the weapon finishes, stickers, and other CS:GO inventory items will be available in Counter-Strike 2. While this is good news for those who unlocked cosmetics elements on Valve’s FPS, players who got caught cheating won’t get a second chance as accounts with VAC or game bans in CS:GO won’t be able to play Counter-Strike 2 on servers secured with Valve anti-cheat system.



On top of revealing that skins and bans carry over from CS:GO to Counter-Strike 2, this FAQ section unveils additional information, such as the fact that competitive cooldowns are shared between the two games, meaning that a player with a competitive cooldown on CS:GO can’t matchmake in Counter-Strike 2 and vice versa. The Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test, which allows a selected number of players to try Valve’s revamped FPS, offers deathmatch and unranked competitive matchmaking on Dust 2, one of the most popular maps in Counter-Strike. Workshop maps and community servers are not yet available in Counter-Strike 2 but should join the game before its official release this summer.

This surprise Counter-Strike 2 announcement came a few days after CS:GO broke its all-time concurrent player count record with over 1.4 million players. When the official CS:GO Twitter account thanked players for this record, the comment section was flooded with requests for an update regarding Counter-Strike 2 following rumors of a new game running on Source 2. Valve did not disappoint and unveiled Counter-Strike 2, and is now inviting more players to join its Limited Test by sending players a notification on the main menu of CS:GO.

Counter-Strike 2 will be released in the summer of 2023 for PC.

Posted: Mar 22, 2023 9:15 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://gamerant.com/counter-strike-2-skins-bans-csgo-carry-over/