Valve release Counter-Strike 2

The fifth iteration of Counter-Strike has officially hit the shelves.

Counter-Strike 2 officially released on Wednesday, September 27, becoming the fifth official release in the game's franchise and arriving as a free upgrade to 2012's release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

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CS2 news, highlights, tips and tricks

Valve first announced Counter-Strike 2 on March 22, revealing massive changes to the game that included a sub-tick system, a complete rework of smokes, overhauled maps, upgraded visuals, and more. The game was offered to a select few players as part of a "Limited Test," which over the course of the following months expanded to include more and more of the CS:GO playerbase.

Maps in the current active duty pool were released one after the other over the last six months and Valve issued a number of updates, bug fixes, and dealt with a number of inconsistencies between the games.

More recently, Valve introduced a reworked Premier mode, unveiled a leaderboard system that used a new "CS rating" metric, and in one of their most substantial changes to affect the competitive scene, reduced the number of rounds played from MR15 (first to 16) to MR12 (first to 13) for matchmaking and Majors.

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The logic behind Valve’s move to MR12

The Limited Test of the game has not been without its fair share of bugs, however, with players struggling with latency issues, inconsistencies in hit registration compared to CS:GO, and the game in general not feeling ready for competitive play, according to a vocal majority of the community and a number of professional players.

It is not clear which tournaments will be the first to make the switch to CS2 following its official release, but tournament organizers are expected to comment in the coming days on their plans. HLTV has reached out to some of the biggest organizers on how they will proceed and will provide an update when we receive a response.