Counter-Strike 2 has been out for four months, and yet it’s still in an incomplete state, updates are begrudgingly sparse, and new content is nowhere to be seen. Read on to learn more about the current state of CS2.
CS2 Is Barren and Incomplete
Content Drought for the Past Three Months
Counter-Strike 2(CS2) released in September 2023 to overwhelming celebration after months of being in beta. However, players were quick to notice that there weren’t much differences nor additions to the official release besides ranked matchmaking. Most in the community reasoned that the game’s launch was the hardest part in the development. Now that Valve has ported Counter-Strike:Global Offensive(CS:GO) as CS2 to their modern proprietary engine, Source 2, then new content and updates will come out much faster.
Almost four months after CS2 completely replaced CS:GO, no new major content has been added. Any of the old game modes from CS:GO such as Retakes, Danger Zone, Arms Race, Demolition Mode, and Flying Scoutsman, are still missing. The overwhelming majority of updates that have arrived are constant bug fixes and patches to remedy the countless bugs players are still discovering after release.
The most significant update came in November, and it was the reinclusion of Workshop Maps. Members of the community were now allowed to upload their own custom-made maps for everyone else to download and play. This was a prominent feature back in CS:GO, where players could upload and have fun with random maps they’ve made. With the arrival of the update, community mapmakers could then port over maps constructed from Valve's old Hammer Editor to its new Source 2 version. This was a long-awaited and celebrated amenity, as map makers were now given free reign over the powerful modern tools that Valve developers themselves used.
However, to rephrase the previous paragraph: the best update since CS2’s release was the reintroduction of letting the community make maps and do the work for themselves. Bugs are still running rampant, players are still struggling with the subtlest of changes to the gunplay born from CS2’s new Subtick* system, and no other old or new content has yet to be added.
- Substick is the term Valve describes CS2 runs on, where no matter what tickrate a server is (64/128), all actions will be recorded and identified at the exact tick they are performed, and the resulting action will always be the same whether moving, firing, jumping, or throwing grenades. This is where the infamous line "What you see is what you get" stems from.
Still Financially Successful Despite Staleness
The lifespan of CS2 as a game has certainly been disappointing so far, but it’s starkly contrasted by the staggering amount of revenue it’s been able to rake in for Valve. CS2’s announcement and release in 2023 amounted to almost a billion dollars in sales for Valve from case openings alone. It’s perplexing that its success and the quality of the game seem to be in an inverse ratio. Perhaps Valve knows they can rest easy and take their time with CS2, as it essentially prints money by itself regardless if they push any updates or not.
Recently Received One Line of Patch Notes
A recent example of the state of updates for CS2, Valve had recently pushed a patch on January 18, 2024 after two weeks of silence. On the official CS2 Twitter(X) account, they posted "We fixed a gap in geometry on Vertigo with today’s update. Thank you for reading," along with the link to the blog post containing the patch notes.
Going to the blog post would read the following:
"[ MAPS ]
Vertigo:
● Fixed a gap in geometry"
Though this was clearly intended to be a light-hearted joke by the developers, it can’t be helped that some of the humor would be mixed with disappointment from the player base.
People from the community openly express their sadness despite the joke, theorizing that Valve has depleted the CS2 development team to minuscule numbers – a running joke similar to the plight that the Team Fortress 2 (TF2) community makes about their game due to the scarcity of updates to TF2.
Despite the extreme drought of new content in TF2, it still holds a stable loyal fanbase. It seems like CS2 is heading in the same direction (or perhaps it has already arrived), and that no matter how much disappointment is served, the fans still flock back.
Source:
CS2 Release Notes for 1/18/2024
