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Counter-Strike 2

Developer(s)

Valve Corporation

Publisher(s)

Valve Corporation

Series

Counter-Strike series

Release date(s)

September 27, 2023

Genre(s)

Tactical first-person shooter

Mode(s)

Multiplayer

Platform(s)

Windows, Linux

Engine

Source 2

Steam AppID

730

Written in

C++

Mod support

Yes (Steam Workshop)

SDK

Counter-Strike 2 Workshop Tools

System requirements

• Win 10 or later
• 4 threads, Intel® Core™ i5 750 or higher, or AMD equivalent
• 8 GB
• 85 GB disk space
• DirectX 11 capable
  with 1GB VRAM

For details, see below

Distribution

Steam

Official website

Official Website

Links

Steam page
ModDB page

Previous game

Aperture Desk Job (release date)
CS:GO (series)

Next game

N/A

Counter-Strike 2 (also colloquially referred to as CS:GO Source 2 prior to announcement, and CS2 for short) is a video game developed by Valve. Announced on March 22, it was planned to be released around Summer 2023, but later it was delayed to September 27, 2023. The game is a remaster of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with new graphics, new contents and technical improvements, including the sub-tick update. It is developed in Valve’s own Source 2 engine, the successor to Source. Prior to its release, Valve added users via CS:GO's game menu to the playtest.

This game was released on September 27th, 2023, completely replacing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However this does not apply to the console version of CS:GO (for PlayStation 3 and the Xbox 360), which remains available for purchase.

The game was generally positively received by critics. Player response to the game was however, mixed, primarily as a result of removed content (e.g. Danger Zone) and features that CS:GO had, CS:GO being delisted on the store, and the game being incompatible with older PC's and macOS, or having performance and other technical issues. The Metacritic user reviews were later review bombed, alongside with Steam, which caused the recent reviews to briefly drop to "Mixed".

Features

New features introduced in Counter-Strike 2 including:

Volumetric smokes

Smokes are now volumetric objects, that can be pushed by grenades, bullets, and more. It also react to lighting and the smokes fill the spaces naturally.

Sub-tick system

Tick rate no longer matters for moving, shooting, or throwing.

Improved Steam Audio

Sounds have been reworked to better reflect the physical environment, be more distinct, and express more game state. They have also been rebalanced for a more comfortable listening experience.

Hardware accelerated ray-tracing for VRAD

VRAD3 now requires graphics card (NVIDIA RTX, AMD RX series) with ray-tracing support to preview & bake lighting. This will allow VRAD to quickly calculates lighting data. VRAD3 was also available on older Source 2 games.

CMAA anti-aliasing

Replacement for FXAA. Another post-processing anti-aliasing method which was sharper than FXAA. Unlike FXAA, CMAA in Counter-Strike 2 cannot be used alongside MSAA.

Content

• Counter-Strike 2 (game\csgo)
• Counter-Strike 2 Windows binaries
• Counter-Strike 2 Linux binaries

Game modes

Main article:  Counter-Strike: Global Offensive/Game Modes

Note:Most information here are from CS:GO, which may also applies to CS2.

Official Game Mode		Match length	Penalties for abandoning?	Description of official Gameplay
	Competitive	20-90 minutes	Yes	The classic game mode: Two teams of 5 players fight in a best of 24 rounds. In Bomb Defusal scenarios, Terrorists must plant a bomb at a target and defend it until it explodes - Counter-Terrorists must either stop them from planting or defuse the bomb before it detonates. In Hostage Rescue scenarios, Counter-Terrorists must find and escort a hostage - Terrorists must stop them. There are skill groups for ranked matchmaking so that ideally players are matched with enemies of a similar skill level. In unranked matchmaking, these skill groups are also regarded but not adjusted.
	Wingman	10-30 minutes	Yes	Like Competitive, but adjusted for 2v2 and for a smaller map or a map section, best of 16 rounds, rounds are shorter.
	Casual	10-20 minutes	No	Like Competitive but not binding ("casual"), with simplified and shortened gameplay: best of 15 rounds, shorter freezetime per round, no friendly fire, no team collision, free armor and free defuse kit/cutters.
	Deathmatch Team vs Team Free For All Classic	10 minutes	No	This is a single 10 minute round with instant respawns. The player's goal is to eliminate as many enemies as possible with whatever weapon they wish to use. Weapons are free and only rifles, SMGs, heavy weapons, pistols and the Zeus x27 may be bought. Players have a short invulnerability period to buy weapons before moving.
War Games
	Arms Race	5-10 minutes	No	This is a single extended round with instant respawn. All players start with the same weapon and get a new one each time they kill an enemy. The progression of unlocked weapons ends with the knife. The first player to get two kills with every weapon plus a kill with the golden knife wins the match.

Built-in Maps

For the list of Counter-Strike 2 maps, see Counter-Strike 2/Maps.

Weapons

Main article:  Counter-Strike 2/Weapons

As of the release of Counter-Strike 2, there are currently no new weapons introduced. However, the smoke that comes from the smoke grenade now can be pushed by bullets, grenades to briefly clear sightlines or expand occlusion, plus can collides with the world objects, as smoke grenades are now dynamic volumetric objects compare to sprites used in previous games. Some weapons, such as all weapons from Danger Zone gamemode, were either removed or left unused as Counter-Strike 2 currently does not have Danger Zone.

Buy Menu

Pistol	SMG	Heavy	Rifle	Equipment	Grenade
Glock-18 / P2000 / USP-S Dual Berettas P250 Tec-9 / CZ75-Auto / Five-SeveN Desert Eagle / R8 Revolver	MAC-10 / MP9 MP7 / MP5-SD UMP-45 P90 PP-Bizon	Nova XM1014 Sawed-Off / MAG-7 M249 Negev Riot Shield (only in )	Galil AR / FAMAS AK-47 / M4A4 / M4A1-S SSG 08 SG 553 / AUG AWP G3SG1 / SCAR-20	Kevlar Vest Kevlar + Helmet Zeus x27 Defuse Kit / Rescue Kit	Molotov / Incendiary Grenade Decoy Grenade Flashbang HE Grenade Smoke Grenade

Other

Knives	Miscellaneous	Co-op Strike
Knife (CT) / Knife (T) Golden Knife (only in ) Karambit Gut Knife ... Spectral Shiv	C4 Medi-Shot Riot Shield Heavy Assaultsuit Snowball	Tactical Awareness Grenade Repulsor Device

Giving Weapons

Note:This section contains info such as VScript (which is non-functional in CS2), and certain commands, that only applies to CS2 predecessor, CS:GO, and may not apply or works with CS2 as these were either removed or currently unused/non-functional.

To give yourself a weapon, you can use the cheat command give <entityname>, which should spawn a specified weapon inside the executing player, for example give weapon_awp. Knives and Danger Zone melees might instantly be removed by the game when they would spawn; To overcome this, one can use the command sequence give <entityname>; ent_fire <entityname> addoutput "classname weapon_knifegg" (in one line!) so that the entity "becomes" an entity that is not removed by the game in the same tick. Note that some weapons have a different classname after being given, e.g. give weapon_axe; ent_fire weapon_melee addoutput "classname weapon_knifegg".

Map driven item giving can be done with game_player_equip. To equip weapons using VScript, a game_player_equip entity can be created, used and removed.

Manipulating Weapons

Weapons can be manipulated via I/O, e.g. with ent_fire, and even more using VScript. All weapon entities support the inputs Kill, SetAmmoAmount <int>, SetReserveAmmoAmount <int>, ToggleCanBePickedUp, for example the command ent_fire weapon_ak47 kill removes all AK-47s in the map. To give some inspiration, if weapon is the VScript handle of a weapon entity, we can use weapon.Destroy() to kill it, weapon.GetOwner() == null to check whether it is dropped (true) or carried by a player (false), EntFireByHandle(weapon, "SetReserveAmmoAmount", "0", 0, null, null) to remove its reserve ammo and much more.

Note:When the weapon is killed that a player has deployed, their viewmodel will be broken until they deploy another weapon.

Tip:There are weapon classes whose entities initially have an identical classname keyvalue after being spawned, even though they were created from different classnames. This makes it impossible to target only one of these weapon classes in the I/O system such as MP5-SD and MP7 entities, because entities of both classes will have the classname "weapon_mp7" after being spawned, so firing I/O events to weapon_mp5sd won't have any effect because there is no entity with that classname. This problem can be bypassed in VScript: If we find an entity with the classname "weapon_mp7", we can identify whether it is actually an MP5-SD or an MP7 by checking whether entity.GetModelName() returns either "models/weapons/w_smg_mp5sd_dropped.mdl" or "models/weapons/w_smg_mp7_dropped.mdl". Other entities whose classname changes on spawn are the USP-S, CZ75-Auto, R8 Revolver, M4A1-S, Rescue Kit, Wrench, Hammer, Axe and all knives except weapon_knife and weapon_knifegg.

Gallery

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Limitations/Bugs

Important: Counter-Strike 2 is not available for macOS. As a result, since Oct 10, 2023, users may receive (CS:GO), via the csgo_legacy branch instead of CS2. Prior to that date, users will have the Windows version of CS2 downloaded to the Mac systems, which is non-functional without using Game Porting Toolkit (or Wine), running Windows on Mac via Boot Camp (Intel Macs only) or using virtualization software.

Later it is confirmed that Valve has dropped support for macOS entirely, users who cannot run Counter-Strike 2 on Mac systems will be offered for Prime Status Upgrade refund^[1], which is no longer available as of December 2, 2023.

At the moment, to report a CS2 bug, visit this GitHub issue page.

Note:The link above leads to CS:GO Bug Report for Mac/Linux, but as of around 2017-2020, this applies to all platforms (including Windows), and both CS:GO & CS2.

System Requirements

Windows

Windows Minimum Recommended Operating system (OS) Windows 10/11 64-bit Processor (CPU) 4 hardware CPU threads - Intel® Core™ i5 750 or higher, or AMD equivalent SSE 4.2 required (since September 29, 2023 update) System memory (RAM) 8 GB Hard disk drive (HDD/SSD) 85 GB Video card (GPU) Video card must be 1 GB or more and should be a DirectX 11-compatible with support for Shader Model 5.0 Note:Unofficially works on Windows 7 - 8.1 until Steam drops support for these operating systems along with the Steam API update with the game in 2024. Support will not be provided for these operating systems however. Please note that using these operating systems may cause issues related to VAC. Note:Requires CPU with SSE4.2 support, 64-bit OS and DirectX 11 (or optionally, Vulkan) compatible card, systems with 32-bit or DirectX 9 only card may chose to download the Legacy version of CS:GO instead if their hardware is incompatible, via the Beta tab on Steam Library.

macOS

This game is currently not available for macOS. As a result, since Oct 10, 2023, users may receive (CS:GO), via the csgo_legacy branch instead of CS2. Prior to that date, users will have the Windows version of CS2 downloaded to the Mac systems, which is non-functional without using Game Porting Toolkit (or Wine), running Windows on Mac via Boot Camp (Intel Macs only) or using virtualization software. Later it is confirmed that Valve has dropped support for macOS entirely, users who cannot run Counter-Strike 2 on Mac systems will be offered for Prime Status Upgrade refund[1], which is no longer available as of December 2, 2023.

Linux

Linux Minimum Recommended Operating system (OS) Ubuntu 20.04, SteamOS 3.0 or other Linux distros. Processor (CPU) 4 hardware CPU threads - Intel® Core™ i5 750 or higher, or AMD equivalent SSE 4.2 required (since September 29, 2023 update) System memory (RAM) 8 GB Hard disk drive (HDD/SSD) 85 GB Video card (GPU) AMD GCN+ or NVIDIA Kepler+ with up-to-date Vulkan drivers. Support for VK_EXT_graphics_pipeline_library highly recommended. Sound (audio device) Any Note:Requires CPU with SSE4.2 support and Vulkan-compatible card, systems with 32-bit or OpenGL only card may chose to download the Legacy version of CS:GO instead if their hardware is incompatible, via the Beta tab on Steam Library.

See also

• Counter-Strike 2 Workshop Tools
• Counter-Strike 2 Dedicated Servers

External links

• Website
• Updates & Patch Notes (previous post will contain both CS:GO and CS2 post)
• Steam Store page
• Counter-Strike 2 on Counter-Strike Wiki (FANDOM)
• CS2 Community VAC
•  Counter-Strike 2 on Wikipedia
• About playtest. https://steamcommunity.com/faqs/steam-help/view/5ED2-ED8E-81F4-0C18

References

References

1. Steam Support - Legacy CS:GO Version I can't run CS2 because I run DirectX 9 or a 32-bit version of Windows. Am I eligible for a Prime Status Upgrade refund? DirectX 9 and/or 32-bit Windows users are eligible for a Prime Status Upgrade refund if their purchase was made on Steam between the announcement of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test (March 22, 2023) and the launch of Counter-Strike 2 (September 27, 2023). I can't run CS2 because I play on a Mac. Am I eligible for a Prime Status Upgrade refund? macOS users are eligible for a refund if most of their CS:GO playtime was on macOS and they played CS:GO on a Mac between the announcement of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test (March 22, 2023) and the launch of Counter-Strike 2 (September 27, 2023), regardless of when they purchased their Prime Status Upgrade. CD keys, gifts, and accounts with bans are not eligible for a refund. Refunds will be offered until December 1, 2023..