New patent filings suggest that Valve could be working on a full Counter-Strike 2 shooter sequel, or a CS:GO update.
There’s a thin but growing dossier of evidence that Valve is working on at least one Counter-Strike game – a full sequel to the series that began back in the year 2000, or perhaps an update of Counter-Strike 2 Global Offensive.
The latest revelation comes to us via PCGamesN, who’ve discovered a series of patent filings connected to the Counter-Strike series. On 14 March, Valve registered a trademark for CS2, with that filing’s serial numbers connected to two earlier filings for Counter-Strike and CSGO.
It may not sound like much, but we’ve seen the shortened ‘CS2’ name before in recent weeks. In early March, Twitter’s Gabe Follower – who has form when it comes to digging up Counter-Strike info – pointed to a recent driver update from NVIDIA. Said update included executables with the file names csgos2.exe and cs2.exe. Closer investigation revealed that both programs carried the name Counter-strike 2.
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 (@gabefollower) March 1, 2023
Theories vary as to what Valve is working on, exactly. Some argue that it’s an update of Counter-Strike: GO, with the decade-old shooter finally being ported over to the newer Source 2 engine. Journalist Richard Lewis, for example, has sources that a “new version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” is on the way under the working title, Counter-Strike 2.
Counter-Strike remains one of Valve’s most important properties, with CS:GO retaining a loyal base of players all these years after launch – in February, the online shooter broke its own records, with 1.3 million concurrent players logging in concurrently.
With numbers like that behind it, it’s perhaps understandable why Valve hasn’t exactly raced to launch a successor. If Lewis’s sources are correct, though, we won’t have long to wait before Valve officially reveals its next Counter-Strike project: “the tentative release date for the beta is in this month of March,” he writes, “with April 1st at the outside.”
Watch this space.