Valve might be up to something with Counter-Strike and could get a beta shortly.

A few days ago, Gabefollower, a known Valve leaker, came across two new exe files in the latest Nvidia drivers. They are called csgos2.exe and cs2.exe. These would lead us to believe that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2, colloquially known as CS:GO, and Counter-Strike 2 could be in the works. It can’t be a coincidence: Nvidia won’t put references in its graphics card drivers that are fictional. So Valve must be working on something behind our backs.

He was joined by Richard Lewis, an eSports journo who is also a tournament organizer: he says several sources have contacted him to tell him that Valve is porting Counter-Strike to the Source 2 engine. He added that there would be some kind of beta of the new game and that it is not so far away: Gabe Newell’s company could do it as early as March. Valve has been able to keep this pretty secret then, which used to be the case with the Half-Life 2 leaks, for example:

“Speaking under the condition of anonymity, sources with knowledge of the game’s development told us that there was a new version of Counter-Strike that had been worked on for some time. The new version is almost certainly set to be released under the working title Counter-Strike 2, and the tentative release date for the beta is in March, with April 1st at the outside. Specific details of the game included that it will, of course, be on the Source 2 engine, a move that should improve the optimization and graphical fidelity of the game. That will likely come at the cost of performance for players with low-end PCs. However, Valve historically has always had a philosophy of empowering those with standard gaming rigs to be able to play their games,” Lewis wrote.

It’s not clear yet if it will become Counter-Strike 2 or if Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will get an update to jump to the new engine. There’s no official confirmation yet, but it’s a safe bet that the popular CS-GO, released in 2012, could get a blood update from the Source 2 engine (first used by DotA 2), announced in 2015.

Source: WCCFTech