After a couple of weeks of rumors, datamining, and speculation, Valve has confirmed the existence of Counter-Strike 2 by unceremoniously dropping three trailers on its official YouTube channel that get right into showing off the new features this title will bring to the series. The trailers confirm Counter-Strike 2 is slated for a Summer 2023 release.
One trailer relays perhaps the most notable piece of information, especially for the more hardcore FPS fans out there. Counter-Strike 2 will have “sub-tick updates.” It also confirms that the game will have a 128-tick rate, which had been previously leaked by the Richard Lewis report. This would put it on the same level as Valorant in terms of server responsiveness.
Tick rate is essentially the rate at which the server acknowledges your inputs and overall player data. High tick rates are particularly important for online FPS games, as the lack of them can cause discrepancies between what a player sees and what happens in the game. If you’ve ever had someone kill you while you had already run well past a wall, it was probably a tick-rate issue.
But the trailer above claims that the tick rate “no longer matters” in Counter-Strike 2. There will be sub-tick updates that register a player’s input in between ticks. Valve states, “The server will know the exact moment you fired your shot, jumped your jump, or peeked your peek.”
Another trailer shows off the game’s new smoke bombs. In Counter-Strike 2, the smoke will be like its own game object that can be affected by players in various ways. You can shoot through it, which will make the smoke slightly dissipate on the areas you hit. You can even throw a grenade to blast away a significant portion of it.
The third trailer showed off a few of the refreshed maps. Valve confirmed that some “Touchstone” maps will remain the same, only getting graphical upgrades, while other older maps will be rebuilt from the ground up, getting complete “Overhauls.” Game Awards presenter and industry veteran Geoff Keighley reported via Twitter that this game will be a “free upgrade” for CS:GO owners and that “all of a player’s CS:GO items go with them to CS2.”
