The long-awaited CS2 and everything related to it

Valve has released Counter-Strike 2, replacing CS:GO. The game is now freely available to all Steam users. For those who owned CS:GO, the game has been renamed to CS2. The same has happened with inventory and other tabs related to the previous version of the shooter. It's no longer possible to access the CS:GO client, as was the case with CS2 before.

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In CS2, the developers have revamped:

In CS2, developers moved the game to the new Source 2 engine.

Another change to note is the weekly rewards system. Now, every week upon reaching a required experience level, a user can independently choose 2 rewards.

Gamers will select their reward from 4 available options. Among them will be cases, skins, and graffiti. How the list of available rewards will change is unknown.

Bad news for those who collect achievements: Valve did not add achievements to Counter-Strike 2 that would be displayed on Steam. The game's page in the library indicates that users can only achieve one hidden achievement.

Image credit: Steam

Following the release of Counter-Strike 2, the new shooter replaced CS:GO in every section of Steam. The old game version became unavailable. Along with this, achievements earned in it disappeared, as did badge progress. If a user's profile had icons from CS:GO displayed, they now appear incorrect and refer to CS2.

System requirements for the new game are also specified:

Additionally, after the release of Counter-Strike 2, developers began censoring the combination "CS:GO" in usernames. These 4 letters are replaced with asterisks. If you try to set your nickname to just "CS:GO" without additional words, the system reports: "Invalid profile name. Please enter a different name or try again".

Image credit: mein-mmo.de

Moreover, players encountered a bug preventing them from accessing CS2. They reported an error when trying to launch the game, with the system showing an error notification.

As noted in the community, the issue tends to affect players who did not participate in the CS2 beta test. Some users mentioned that restarting the Steam client resolves the problem.

Despite these issues, the game has been hugely successful, reaching a peak online count of 1.191 million users in the hours following its release, as provided by SteamDB statistics.

Image credit: SteamDB 

Moreover, the daily peak online count reached 1.265 million. The chart shows a sharp drop at the moment when Valve shut down Counter-Strike servers for the new shooter's release. It's worth noting that CS2 has yet to beat CS:GO's record of 1.8 million concurrent players.

Main image: ds-servers.com