Valve: "Launching when we did was the fastest way to get CS2 to where we all want it to be"

Counter-Strike's developers explained some of their thought processes in a rare interview.

Counter-Strike 2 developers Valve Software have given pcgamer.com an interview in which they detail the thinking behind the transition away from CS:GO. While the interview didn't touch on much from the competitive side of the game, it shed light on the early release, subtick, and a tease of the possibility of adding a new weapon.

"We know there's a conversation about whether the Limited Test should have been longer," the developers said. "Without everyone playing the same game, we couldn't make much progress on the most critical systems like networking, performance, and core gameplay," they explained, pointing to the CS2 Limited Test player base shrinking as time went on.

"Launching the game has massively accelerated the pace of improving CS2, so we think that launching when we did was the right time, even if the landing was (and still is) bumpy. Ultimately, this is the fastest way to get CS2 to where we all want it to be one or five or ten years from now."

The launch has not been without controversy, and the game has attracted criticism from professionals as tenured as Oleksandr "⁠s1mple⁠" Kostyliev and Ilya "⁠Perfecto⁠" Zalutskiy.

The sub-tick system in particular has come under fire, one that Valve has defended and said is "mostly working as intended."

"The goal of sub-tick is to give everyone a consistent, tick-independent experience that's better than CS:GO's 64 or 128 tick experience. For the most part the system works as intended, but as we rolled out the feature to more and more people we got feedback about systems that weren't reaching their goals."

The system gives Valve more control — in CS:GO, things like spray patterns and jump-throwing grenades gave different outputs based on tick rate. In CS2, spray patterns look slightly smaller than 64-tick CS:GO but Valve say "are roughly the size" you see in 128-tick GO.

From a more casual point of view, criticism has also been leveled at the lack of content on launch. There has been no operation, while more laid-back game modes like retakes and surf require connecting to a community server without there being a browser in-game.

The explanation for this is is that "all game modes fundamentally depend on solid core gameplay," they say. "In the short term we have been keeping our development focused on the spaces where players spend the overwhelming amount of their collective time." Valve still have plans to re-introduce popular game modes and to explore others.

New weapons are also on the table — but Valve say they have learned their lesson from the release of the overpowered R8 revolver in the winter of 2015.

"It's not the top priority at the moment, but we absolutely plan to introduce some new weapons for CS2. We'll typically look at cases where players either don't have the right tools to approach a situation or have only one or two tools available. Where is the gameplay getting stale? What kind of weapon might shake up the status quo?

"Among the many things we learned from the R8 was to be more careful in shipping new (or major changes to) weapons, to let players put them through their paces before making them available everywhere."

The journey all new Counter-Strike maps go on is an example of Valve's philosophy of prioritizing early release with an eye on future changes. "No matter how much internal testing we do with our maps, we can never match the feedback we get from millions of players throwing millions of smokes or jumping on every conceivable surface."

It is clear that Counter-Strike 2 is a work in progress, but the transition to a new engine was the inevitable solution to future-proofing the game.

"Better tools were the foundation of Source 2, and those tools are now available to every artist in the Counter-Strike community. The tools don't get a lot of headlines, but they're the key to all of the community content that will shape CS2 in the years to come.

"Just as CS:GO's final form was the culmination of a decade of experiments, CS2's future isn't set in stone. We don't have a specific vision that we're trying to realize, but rather a process we want to continue to execute for many years. We'll continue to explore all of the opportunities that come with the game and do the hard work necessary to make CS2 the place every FPS fan wants to be."