In this days, Valve is celebrating Steam’s 20th anniversary the way it does best: with discounts on almost all of its games, as well as its consoles Steam Deck. In addition, the studio has published a chronology full of curiosities about the platform, and that includes a small “pearl” about the launch of Counter-Strike 2: initially it said that it would arrive this summer (and that is what it continues to say on the official website), but now that has changed for a «will be released very soon«.
Earlier this year, the Counter-Strike community was clapping its hands for joy after several dataminers, players and journalists affirmed that something big was on the way with respect to Counter-Strike 2: the sequel to the famous CS:GO will be free, and all the players’ precious cosmetics will be preserved. It was also announced that “it will be released this summer”, which in the end has not happened (well, actually there is still time because summer officially ends on September 23).
Counter-Strike 2 is coming sooner rather than later
This is precisely what Valve has told us in the chronology it has published on the occasion of its 20th anniversary, a very interesting chronology that begins by talking about the dispute over which was the first third-party game released on Steam, and which ends with of course telling us what we mentioned at the beginning: that Counter-Strike 2 “will be released very soon.”
Counter-Strike 2 has already been available in a limited Beta phase, which at first was extremely restricted as only a small number of CS:GO players were allowed to enter (that was the moment when Valve determined that the game would be released in summer). A couple of weeks ago, almost everyone was finally able to try Counter-Strike 2, but of course what seems certain is that the promised release date is not going to be fulfilled… or yes, because at the end of the day “very “soon” for Valve could be next week, next month… or next year.
And here we enter the usual dilemma: is it better that they launch it sooner, or that they take longer and launch it WELL? Honestly, being a game as popular as this one, we believe that Valve cannot risk launching it with problems and that it is better to wait longer but that when the game comes out, it is in an optimal state of operation and playability. Obviously you will have some problems at first, but if they are minor problems it will take very little time to fix them.
What is clear is that Counter-Strike 2 is currently a priority for Valve developers; The promises and expectations are high, and being the company it is, it cannot afford failures, at least not in this game with such an immense fan base. Counter-Strike 2 will be released very soon, probably before the end of the year, and the fact that it doesn’t end up arriving in the summer is perhaps preferable to a release that is too early and then arouses complaints.