So, how are we all feeling about that Counter-Strike 2 announcement? Valve revealed the game pretty much out of nowhere last week - it’ll serve as a free upgrade for CS:GO, and despite it releasing over a full decade on from its predecessor, it looks like it’s going to be worth the wait.
The devs have promised that Counter-Strike 2 will be “the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history”, and it’s not hard to see how. Upgraded visuals, completely rebuilt maps, redesigned audio, and fancier Smoke Grenades aside, the title will be completely removing tick rate - it’ll instead use “sub-tick update architecture”. The official website states: “Regardless of tick rate, moving and shooting will be equally responsive and your grenades will always land the same way.”
Take a look at the trailer for Counter-Strike 2 below.
Although the game will be releasing for everyone this summer (seemingly only on PC), some lucky players have already been getting stuck in thanks to the limited test. As PC Gamer reports, it’s thanks to this test (and more to the point, people datamining it) that new anti-cheat software has been discovered. Posted to Twitter by @aquaismissing, it appears as though matches will instantly end if a cheater is identified.
“Looks like some sort of new anti-cheat measure is in the works for Counter-Strike 2 called ‘VAC Live’. If a cheater gets detected during a match, the match will be cancelled,” @aquaismissing tweeted, along with a screenshot showing the text which will seemingly display if the software is triggered.
As PC Gamer writes, this can only really be a positive thing. Since leaving online games mid-match will usually incur a penalty - players can sometimes be forced to sit through matches with cheaters just praying for it to end quickly so that they don’t get temporarily banned for quitting. Hopefully, if the new software works well, it should minimise this issue and hopefully put people off from trying to cheat in the first place.