Counter-Strike 2’s biggest update so far!

Counter-Strike 2 just shipped its biggest update this far!
Ever since the release of CS2, it has been kind of quiet, but now we finally see a lot of new content.
Let us show you what this new major update has in store for us. We got quite a lot of new changes and quality of-life updates.

In this article we will be going through some major topics:

- Arms Race game mode is back (finally!)
- New sticker crafting feature
- A new case called “The Kilowatt Case” with the FIRST-EVER Zeus skin in it - and the brand new Kukri knife!
- New sticker capsule
- Gameplay updates

Arms Race

Arms Race is finally back!
This mode has finally returned to the realm of CS. It is a beloved mode to warm up your aim, and now we got “Baggage” and “Shoots” as its two maps.

But we also, sadly, have to say goodbye (at least for now) to the golden knife. If you reach the highest level in Arms race you sadly do not get a golden version of the vanilla knife anymore, but your own knife instead.

We are super happy to see this game mode returning and look forward to see other game modes coming back, hopefully, during 2024.

Stickers

Arguably, the biggest change in this update is the way stickers can now be applied.
Valve now allow you to apply your stickers in any way imaginable (almost).

Stickers can now be placed at user-specified positions and they can even be rotated 360 degrees. So you can rotate and drag the stickers all over the gun. The default sticker spots are still able to be picked, but you can customise your gun to your own desires now.

All weapons can now also fit 5 stickers.

This means crafting on your guns can now be done in some very very interesting ways.

Here is how that looks in game:

AK-47 | Neon Rider

You can put the sticker everywhere on the gun

AK-47 | Neon Rider

You can put the 5th sticker everywhere except the backside of the gun.

AK-47 | Vulcan

Another Cloud 9 sticker on an already existing position.

Desert Eagle | Sputnik

with 5 stickers

Desert Eagle | Sputnik

ingame

We made an example on how the 5th spot can be used, and how you craft. It is quite nice to drag and drop the sticker wherever you want it to be, even ON other stickers! (see picture 3).

And below are some examples of crafts from the community…yeah, boys will be boys :D

Case

“The Kilowatt Case” most likely got its shocking name from the Pink rarity Zeus skin featured in it. But we are quite delighted to have a new case.

The look of the case is very different and breaks away from the norm of how a weapon cases normally have looked like. This skins we also find quite appealing.

New Backgrounds

Now with our two new Arms Deal maps, we also got two new menu backgrounds.
Everyone welcome the “Baggage” and “Warehouse” backgrounds.
The latter most likely refers to “Booth”, the famous weapons dealer that brought us the skins in Counter-Strike to begin with.

Music kit

We also have seen our fair share of new music kits, you can obtain them through the ingame store in their normal and StatTrak™ variant.

Sticker capsule

For the anime fans we seem to have quite a few more of anime themed stickers in this capsule. We hope the “Ambush” capsule did not take you by a surprise- it definitely caught us off guard.

Gameplay

We are also very happy to learn that Valve has been working on various improvements to the CS2 gameplay and some quality of life updates, for example they added a "Refund All" button to the buy menu. Silencers can now also be reattached regardless of whether detaching them is enabled or not.

Regarding actual gameplay they:

1. Added a setting to disable first person bullet tracers

2. Various adjustments to sub-tick shooting

3. Fixed several cases where players could silently drop down vertical surfaces

4. Improved smoothness of sliding along surfaces

5. Fixed an issue where collisions between players were jittery

6. To ensure loadouts are correct at the beginning of matches, loadout changes are no longer allowed while searching for Premier, Competitive, or Wingman

7. Smokes now cast shadows (and smoke rendering and animation have been improved)

8. Reduced peeker's advantage in many cases

9. The amount of peeker's advantage in the steady state is reduced by 16ms

10. Also reduced the frequency of situations that lead to very large peeker's advantage due to excessive command queue depth

11. The Zeus can now be reused (it takes 30 seconds to recharge it).

If you take a quick look at the gameplay patch notes, there is only one question:
Is this the quality update that has been awaited for months?
It looks like Valve decided to fix all gameplay problems at once in one big
update instead of fixing each problem one by one.
The main reason for this is probably to make us feel a big difference as
everything was changed at once.
*PATCHNOTES*
The patch notes certainly look promising. After the first CS2 sessions many pro
players and community members are very excited.
But the next few weeks will show whether this update has actually fixed the
peeker’s advantage, rubber-banding and the general smoothness of the game.
In any case, we have an exciting time ahead of us and it's good news that Valve
is trying to fix these things.

Conclusion

We have on this day (7th February) witnessed a huge update to CS2 with some fundamentally new features. We are very excited to see these types of releases and hope more will come during 2024.

We hope you enjoyed reading this article. Discuss this new update with people on our Discord.

If you are into CS2 skins, then head over to our marketplace to upgrade CS2 loadout!