Journalist and prominent Counter-Strike leaker, Richard Lewis, has made the bold claim that Valve is gearing up to announce Counter-Strike 2 as soon as this month.
Following the discovery of references to a “CSGO2” executable in the latest NVIDIA drivers, Lewis says that he was contacted by sources speaking under the condition of anonymity, who informed him that a new version of CS:GO operating on the Source 2 engine is very real, tentatively titled Counter-Strike 2, and launching as a beta this month or very early April.
Things are getting spicy… There's an actual config for "csgos2.exe" based on separate @csgo "source2" version in the latest GeForce Experience update
..AppDataLocalNVIDIANvBackendApplicationOntologydatafingerprint.db pic.twitter.com/SXMz4nyewy
— ?Gabe Follower (@gabefollower) March 1, 2023
Lewis’ sources have said that CS2 will feature improved match-making and 128 tick official servers, but otherwise it sounds like this will essentially function as a port of the game to the newer engine with everything else – including things like player progression and skins – hopefully left intact.
Several professional CS:GO players had reportedly recently been flown out to Valve HQ in Seattle to test out this new version of Counter-Strike.
You can read the full story here but, while seemingly backed up by plausible sources and evidence, without official confirmation from Valve this is all still firmly in rumour territory.