Some bombshell news was revealed this weekend as developers of Counter Strike Global Offensive, an absolute staple in the first-person shooter genre, Valve Corporation, says that a sequel to the game, CSGO 2, is almost ready to go and the beta version can be released within the month. 

CSGO is quite an old game, Counter Strike, the original version, being out for 23 years, while Global Offensive has been out for 11. So one of the biggest concerns for such an old game is the outdated systems and servers the game runs on that cause constant problems for current players. This coupled with the very rare updates that Valve does for the game, a lot of players have been wishing for the game to update to something sleeker.

That’s what the new game would be all about, running on the Source 2 engine and a higher tick rate server, meaning that the server would process more every second, to be exact, it would process double what the current servers process. This would finally give the game more overall smoothness while playing and less delayed input response for certain players. Another improvement would be matchmaking, allowing for lower reliance on third parties like FACEIT and ESEA, which are mostly used by pro players when playing ranked.

Now, it’s currently being rumored as CSGO 2, which would be a whole new game, however as its release gets more concrete, it’s believed that it may just be a move of the current game to the new Source 2 engine. 

This brings two concerns with this move, if skins would transfer, since skins are probably the most valuable thing from the game, some reaching up to hundreds of thousands of dollars, and how the pro scene would implement the new engine, as it may change up small yet noticeable details. 

This is some big news as everyone in the first person shooter community has been wondering if there would ever be a full scale update and improvement to such a staple in the genre, and it’s looking positive so far, especially if Valve is confident in rolling out beta by the end of March.