Counter-Strike 2 is out now for PC players and it has been welcomed warmly by fans – reaching a massive 1.2million players in the 24 hours since its launch.
This is the first game in the Counter-Strike series to benefit from Valve‘s Source 2 engine, which featured in Dota 2, the minigame Robot Repair in The Lab, Half-Life: Alyx and Aperture Desk Job. Check out the launch trailer below:
Acting as the “next era” of Counter-Strike and “the largest technical leap forward in [its] history”, anticipation for the sequel was at an all time high.
That was reflected in the player count records for Counter-Strike 2, which launched on Wednesday (September 27). Per SteamDB, the all time peak player count hit 1.8million with approximately 1.15million playing at the time of writing.
Accordingly, Counter-Strike 2 has rushed up the scoreboards for the most popular titles on Steam, surpassing competitors PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds, Apex Legends, Rust and Warframe.
These staggering statistics were helped by the fact that that all of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players got Counter-Strike 2 as a free addition to their libraries.
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Moreover, players’ coveted collection of skins in Global Offensive were transferred to the upgraded Counter-Strike 2 and now look a lot better in the advanced engine.
“In addition to supporting legacy models and finishes, all stock weapons have been upgraded with high-resolution models, and some weapon finishes take advantage of these new models,” assured Valve.
As these in-game items can be valued at tens of thousands of pounds, it likely would have spelled disaster for the developer if it didn’t allow old skins to be carried over.
In other gaming news, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2 is on its way to Steam next week, in both standard and digital deluxe editions, now that its Epic Games Store exclusivity has ended.