Counter-Strike 2 released on September 27. The game was a much-awaited release, especially for people who were Counter-Strike: Global Offensive enthusiasts. The game is based on Valve’s latest Source 2 engine, which contains many graphical and gameplay enhancements.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive had been the most popular game on Steam in terms of players, reaching a whopping 1.8 million in May 2023. When Counter-Strike 2 was announced, which was the former’s successor, it was also expected to top the charts.
The game has met those expectations as it tops the Most Played Games list on Steam in terms of the Current Playerbase.
Counter-Strike 2 Surpasses the Competition in Terms of Player Count
Looking at the current Steam Charts, Counter-Strike 2’s peak player count (when the snapshot was taken) stood at 1.13 Million, which is almost twice of Dota 2, which stands at the second position.
Valve’s latest tactical First Person Shooter came out with a massive player base on Steam. Before the full release, select players were invited to participate in the game’s limited Beta. Ever since leaks and gameplay footage reached players, the hype for the game increased.
The game has also surpassed the likes of GTA 5, PUBG, and Apex Legends. It has truly become the success that Valve was hoping it would be. Its also a great game in general, and most would probably consider it a step above CS: GO.
Players praised the game’s enhanced graphical fidelity thanks to the new engine. The Source engine was developed by Valve almost over a decade ago. Counter-Strike: Source was the first game to use the engine.
Despite all the improvements and Valve’s loyal player base, the release of Counter-Strike 2 is surrounded by bugs and user complaints. A variety of bugs, as well as problems in the game’s Hitbox and more, were reported by players.
Too Many Problems Reported by CS2 Players Despite the Game Topping the Player Count Chart
A lot of bugs, as well as issues spoiling the experience of players, were reported. Players reported the famous Michael Jackson bug. Several players took to Reddit to post hilarious montages and clips of them spotting enemies leaning forward in the iconic Smooth Criminal fashion.
AMD Graphics card users were also banned from official servers when they enabled AMD’s anti-lag features. However, Valve has started reversing these bans.
Players who use AMD Graphics Cards also reported many stuttering issues at launch post graphics drivers update.
The stutters can be so awful that they even result in players teleporting in the direction they were traversing. Enemies seem to appear out of thin air and kill players without they can even blink. The issue was caused by the shaders not loading in time. That is because CS2 doesn’t pre-load shaders and loads them in real time.
Issues regarding the game’s tick rate were also widespread in the game’s community. Tick rate, for people unaware of the term, is how frequently a server processes updates. The higher the tick rate, the better the experience for players in the game.
Valve locked the tick rate to 64 Hz for CS: GO on its official servers. However, it could be bumped up on others. Tick rate issues were supposed to be gone with Valve’s all-new sub-tick update system.
But currently, Valve is forcing everyone to play with a 64 Hz tick rate, as revealed by SteamDB creator Pavel Djundik.
Seems like CS2 hardcoded the tickrate in the client binary, so even if server binary is patched (they got rid of GetTickInterval function which made this easy), it shouldn’t matter.
— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) September 14, 2023
Valve should be improving stuff that is subpar, rather than bruteforcing it with 128 tick.
The most palpable issue with the game must be the Hitbox misalignment present in the game. Hitbox misalignment issues mean the game fails to register damage inflicted on the enemy. This naturally makes for an erroneous player experience, especially at competitive levels.
Regardless Counter-Strike 2 is still a phenomenal game, and is an incredible success for Valve and Steam as a whole.
Follow us for more entertainment coverage on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube.
