Valve’s on the precipice of launching a serious replace to Counter-Strike: International Offensive, in line with a report from esports journalist Richard Lewis (through Forbes). Sources near the scenario inform Lewis that Valve might lastly launch a brand new model of the sport on the corporate’s Supply 2 engine as early as this month.

Lewis, who has damaged huge CS:GO tales prior to now, says he’s informed that Valve already enlisted a gaggle {of professional} CS:GO gamers to check out the up to date recreation on the firm’s Seattle headquarters. Migrating the sport to the Supply 2 engine, which is utilized by a few of Valve’s different video games, like Dota 2 and Half-Life: Alyx, might enable for higher efficiency and graphics.

That’s apparently not the one improve Valve’s been engaged on. Lewis provides that the “new” CS:GO might include an improved matchmaking system that extra intently resembles the third-party platforms the place gamers can discover and be a part of CS:GO matches, like FACEIT or ESEA. Valve’s additionally anticipated to extend the tick price of the servers utilized by the sport from 64 to 128, probably making for much less latency throughout on-line matches.

It’s onerous to imagine that over 10 years after the discharge of CS:GO (and over 20 because the launch of the unique title) that Valve would spring an enormous replace on us with little to no fanfare. However this isn’t the one proof of a attainable improve. Final week, u/DAOWAce on Reddit found a suspect pair of executable information, named “csgos2.exe” and “cs2.exe,” included in latest drivers launched by Nvidia.

Whereas it might sound like Valve’s releasing a wholly new recreation, Twitter customers @gabefollower and @aquaismissing clarify that this might merely point out that Valve’s shifting the sport over to the Supply 2 engine and that builders could have been a bit lazy with the file-naming. We hopefully received’t have to attend an excessive amount of longer to see what the so-called Counter-Strike 2 is all about, although, as Lewis says the sport’s “about able to go.”