Image: Valve
Counter-Strike 2 is not being well-received by players and esports pros due to numerous bugs and issues that Valve has yet to fix.
Counter-Strike 2 is now Valve’s worst-rated game on Steam, following complaints surrounding numerous bugs and issues suffered by players since launch day. The game carried over positive reviews from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and thus was instantly well-reviewed on Steam at launch, but that positive streak didn’t last very long.
Like any game that replaces its predecessor completely, Counter-Strike 2 has launched with no small amount of controversy from its playerbase. Even esports pros have taken to social media to warn people off the game until it’s ‘fixed’, citing numerous hitbox issues, strange bugs and more problems currently affecting gameplay. Here’s why the current state of Counter-Strike 2 has riled players up so much:
Bugs galore
Counter-Strike 2 currently has more than 900,000 negative reviews on Steam with recent reviews considered ‘Mixed’, though you’d have to peruse reviews from the last 30-or-so days to really understand what people think of the sequel, as reviews from CS:GO are included in the bunch too. Most players seem unhappy with missing features and content (we’ll get to that later), but a lot of players are upset that the game launched with all-new gamebreaking bugs.
These bugs range from hitbox issues that cause players to seemingly miss enemies while shooting directly at them, and others are a little more hilarious. A gameplay capture went viral just this week, showing a player getting shot by an enemy doing a Michael Jackson-like tilt:
Valve has even changed the header on Counter-Strike 2’s official X/Twitter account to acknowledge the Michael Jackson lean, which at this point has earned its meme status and then some. Players are teaching each other to do the ‘Michael Jackson peek’ in-game on any keyboard, which… we wouldn’t recommend seeing as Valve might start seeing it as an exploit. That's just our two cents.
Another issue that’s cropped up involve the game’s broken hitboxes, which cause players to miss shots while aiming directly at the enemy from certain angles.
A recent Counter-Strike 2 update has likely solved this issue, but it took more than two weeks post-launch to do so, and that’s after months of limited testing to boot. More players are reporting issues like dying while behind corners, imbalanced matchmaking, rampant cheating and player collision causing - there’s no other way to put this - unintentional flight:
You can also twerk now. That’s not a bug. I just think it’s neat:
And then there’s the missing content
The majority of negative Steam reviews for Valve’s sequel are largely centered around its missing content. Sequels, especially those which replace the original game entirely, are expected to give players new content on top of what they already had. For Counter-Strike 2, Valve opted out of adding multiple game modes and features that existed in CS:GO to give players the basic gameplay they’ve become accustomed to with a fresh makeover.
That isn’t a bad thing unless you actually liked missing modes like Arms Race, Demolition or Danger Zone. The Workshop and Community Servers are also missing, though Valve has confirmed that they’ll be added back in at a later date.
A few maps were also included in marketing material for Counter-Strike 2 prior to launch, but never made it into the game. Missing CS:GO maps include Baggage, Shoots, Shortdust, Lake, Train and more, making for quite a bit of content players used to have access to but don't anymore. There is a reason for this, of course: Valve had to put a lot of work into remaking these maps in the Source 2 engine, on top of the rest of CS:2’s overhauled content. Something had to give with the game’s quickly-approaching Summer 2023 release window, and a ton of content was sacrificed as a result.
This is not to say that Valve won’t add these maps and modes back in at a future date - the developer almost certainly will as part of future patches and Operations. However, the lack of new content for players to chew on adds insult to injury. It’s strange for an entire sequel to launch with no new maps, weapons, modes and other sizable gameplay updates besides volumetric smoke and CS Ratings. Some players can handle that, while others just want CS:GO back.
It’s not over until it’s over
Counter-Strike 2 can and will bounce back from a few hundred thousand bad reviews on Steam, given its popularity. Overwatch 2 became Steam’s lowest-rated game of all time some weeks back, and guess what? It’s now in the Top 10 list of Steam’s highest-selling games by revenue. While it’s debatable if Counter-Strike 2 is ready for professional competition (it’s headed for IEM Sydney next week), players clearly still enjoy the game as is. Valve has a lot of time to patch the game’s bugs and issues up over the next few months, and a few Operations could go a long way to garner positive reception for the sequel.
What isn’t debatable is that Counter-Strike 2 has launched with no small amount of problems, and players are justifiably upset by it. Steam reviews aren’t everything, though, and this is still somehow one of the most successful Counter-Strike launches Valve has enjoyed in a while.