It’s like it never left.
Valve has officially brought Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) back on Steam. The game’s Steam store page was replaced by Counter-Strike 2 when the latter sequel (or reboot, depending on who you ask) was released. While players could still access CS:GO through a beta build of Counter-Strike 2, they now have a much easier way to play it.
There is a catch, however.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is back on Steam, kind of
Valve has brought a Steam store page for CS:GO back on Steam, following its removal with the introduction of Counter-Strike 2. There is a catch, however: while players can now access the game via its own standalone Steam page, the game has no matchmaking features at the moment.
There is a way to get around this, thankfully. Players can simply hop into Steam’s server browser and join various community servers to play the game with others online. Given the game’s sudden return on Steam, there should be no shortage of players looking to get a game going.
CS:GO’s new Steam page wasn’t officially announced by Valve, and remains unlisted when looking for the game on Steam. As long as you have a direct link to the store page’s URL, or search for the game using search engines, you’ll still be able to access the store page. This is a puzzlingly barebones way to bring back the game after all this time, but it could just be that Valve wants to keep players on Counter-Strike 2 for now.
Don’t expect Valve-sponsored CS:GO esports events in the future
Even with the re-release of CS:GO on Steam, Valve confirmed this week to Dust2.us that it will not be granting licenses for tournament organisers to operate CS:GO esports tournaments. This is in spite of the fact that Valve has already given out licenses for Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source esports events.
This will likely throw a wrench in the plans of anyone looking to run events based on CS:GO’s resurging popularity, though Counter-Strike 2 remains an option for esports competition.
