Counter-Strike 2 has been hotly anticipated ever since it was announced back in March 2023. Although Valve stated that the game would be fully released before the end of Summer, it did however initiate an immediate limited test for the game at the time of announcement.
Nevertheless, this limited test was available to only select players who fulfilled a certain criterion such as being a Prime Member on CSGO. After what seemed like an eternity, CS2 finally became available to the general public on September 27. And as you may have guessed, it became an instant hit.
The first-person shooter wasted no time in becoming a global sensation, the numbers on Steam charts speak for themselves!
With that said, let us now dive further into the article.
CS2 Server Capacity Reached!
As of writing, it has not been a week yet since CS2 launched on Steam, and Valve servers are already crashing. Not because of technical faults and maintenance issues but because of the sheer number of vast concurrent players who are actively playing the game, seemingly 24/7.
As can be seen above, the active numbers of Counter-Strike 2 players at any time are not below a whopping 1 million milestone mark! And this is in no way a small feat to achieve, and that, too, consistently!
Valve is apparently aware of this as it acknowledged the issue in an X post on September 29th, saying: “Turns out a lot of you want to play Counter-Strike 2! If you’re having trouble finding a match it’s because we’ve hit server capacity in different regions. We’re adding more server capacity as fast as possible. Thanks for your patience while this is being addressed.”
As such, if you are having issues while playing CS2, you might have to wait a bit until the issue gets resolved. To get updated information on how your region’s server is doing, check out Steamstat.us for further information.
How To Download CS2 on a PC?
In case you are late to the party and haven’t got the chance to download Counter-Strike 2 on your PC, there’s no need to worry as we’ve got you covered!
Counter-Strike 2 is exclusively available to play for free on Steam. You can download it from there, the total game size is about 30GB. If you don’t have a Steam account, there’s still no need to worry. You can always buy prime CS2 accounts at decent rates via Eldorado, which is a top-rated popular site for gaming-related services.
All Counter-Strike 2 Achievements
Dedicated fans of any particular video game aim to make it to 100% completion, even if it means unlocking all the 100+ achievements. And Counter-Strike fans are no exception to this.
Speaking of achievements, CSGO had a big number of 167 unique achievements to unlock and many dedicated fans invested hours of their precious time into getting those. Unfortunately, the advent of CS2 threw all those hard-earned achievements out of the window.
And that’s not the end of the picture yet. Buckle up, readers! You are in for a bit of a shocking surprise. While CSGO had a total of 167 unique achievements to unlock, CS2 only has ONE SINGLE achievement!
Unsurprisingly, this has confused many players. And to add fuel to this complexity, this sole CS2 achievement is ironically sorted under “hidden achievement”. As such, one would think that in order to unlock this “hidden” achievement, they would have to grind hundreds of hours into the game and make it worth the replacement for all the 167 unique CSGO achievements.
However, this is not so. You only need to complete 1 single match, either offline or online, to get this “hidden” achievement. Titled “A New Beginning”, the description reads “This is Counter-Strike, too”.
As one would have guessed, this “hidden” achievement has spawned several fan-based speculations and theories all over the internet. Some speculate that this is an indication of way more achievements to come with future updates while some theorize that this “hidden” achievement has more to it than meets the eye.
CS2 Premiere and Competitive Modes
Counter-Strike 2’s sole achievement is not the only confusing thing in the game. While CSGO had one competitive ranked gameplay mode, CS2 comes with 2 different ranked modes: Premiere and Competitive.
Starting with Premiere, in CS2, players start off with the map selection process. Out of the total 7 maps, Team A first bans 2 maps from the list. This is followed by Team B banning 3 more maps. Then Team A proceeds to ban yet another map. The last remaining map is then selected for the match round. With that done, Team B gets to decide what role to play: CT or T.
Votes on which maps to ban are determined by each member of a team casting their own separate votes for the maps they want to ban. The maps with the most banned votes at the end of a voting phase are the ones that are banned.
Moreover, the ranking evaluation in CS2 Premiere is determined by an all-new CS Rating. In simple words, the CS Rating is a range of numbers, starting from 0 and going all over to 35,000. The higher the number, the higher the rank. Each sub-category of CS Rating has its own color code that is visible alongside the CS Rating number, as shown below.
- Grey: 0-4,999
- Light blue: 5,000-9,999
- Dark blue: 10,000-14,999
- Dark purple: 15,000-19,999
- Pink: 20,000-24,999
- Red: 25,000-29,999
- Gold: 30,000-35,000
On the other hand, the Competitive mode in CS2 is largely the same as the Competitive in the former CSGO. In that, you and your team get to select maps that you all want to play on and will only match up with those opposing teams queuing in for at least one of those same maps.
In addition, your rank in Competitive is determined by skill groups, just like how it used to be in CSGO, except that now there is a skill group for each map this time. For example, if you are Global Elite on Inferno, you can be Golden Nova on Mirage at the same time.
To Wrap It Up
Counter-Strike 2 is an iconic successor of the legendary CSGO game. While we all made some of the best unforgettable memories in CSGO, I think it’s time to move on. CS2 promises a myriad of new opportunities for all players globally and it’s about time we look forward to making even greater memories!
What do you think? Share your thoughts with us and let us know in the comments below!
