Reload those rifles and prepare to practice your spray control, because it looks like a new version of CS:GO, possibly even Counter-Strike 2, may be on the way soon.
Don’t get too excited just yet, because we’ve yet to have any official news regarding a new Counter-Strike game from Valve. The possible reveal information comes via a recent update to Nvidia software.
As spotted by gabefollower and auaismissing on Twitter, the most recent Nvidia drivers update introduced game profile support for two new programs: csgo2.exe and cs2.exe.
Something weird just happened. Latest NVIDIA drivers introduced support for unknown app executables called "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". Why project is called Counter-Strike 2 and what are you cooking @csgo? https://t.co/U9YKlAjwgy pic.twitter.com/PU8Op9uGLq
— Gabe Follower 2 (@gabefollower) March 1, 2023
The discovery was followed by a statement from Counter-Strike journalist Richard Lewis saying that the game is very much real. Lewis says that it’ll be released under the working title Counter-Strike 2 and is likely to arrive in beta this month.
Source 2 – an update to the engine CS:GO runs on – has been rumored for many years now. Little is known about the followup to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, including whether it will even be a followup.
CS:GO continues to hold firm at the top of Steam’s player charts, towering far above the next contender of Dota 2. Those in the competitive shooter have invested plenty of money in cosmetic skins for weapons. If CS:GO proves to be an entirely separate release, the shift over could be a bumpy one.
Fortunately, it doesn’t appear that will be the case. Aquaismissing followed up with a further tweet stating that they believe the release will be shifting CS:GO to Source 2, and that “your skins are safe”.
We’ll need to wait for official word from Valve to find out much more about CS:GO 2, but with the original’s popularity remaining high alongside the success of relative newcomer Valorant, it’s an exciting time to be a fan of tactical team-based first-person shooters.
