CSGO will officially die in a week as CS2 takes over

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, arguably the most iconic competitive shooter of all time, will officially be gone forever as of the start of 2024, with its replacement Counter-Strike 2 now established.

CS:GO was released in 2012, and in the years since, grew into a behemoth, as by far the most-played game on Steam, and the world’s premier esport title.

As it aged however, fans did become impatient for a new release, or at least a significant overhaul to a game that was still running on an outdated engine, and Source 2 was just sitting there.

In September 2023, after much anticipation, CS2 was released, an overhaul of CS:GO on the Source engine. And, it entirely replaced the previous game. However, CS:GO remained playable through a launch option for CS2. Soon, that will be gone.

CS:GO will be gone forever

Shortly after the release of CS2, Valve clarified what the future of CS:GO would look like. Sadly, for those hoping to still play the old version, the developers confirmed that support for CS:GO will cease entirely on January 1, 2024.

Until that date, CS:GO is playable through the CS:GO Legacy Version, available in the ‘betas’ menu of CS2’s properties.

Valve

But, Valve explained, “After January 1, 2024 the game will still be available, but certain functionality that relies on compatibility with the Game Coordinator (e.g., access to inventory) may degrade and/or fail.”

This means that the Legacy Version option will still exist, but with the dev team no longer looking after it, there is a good chance that it will be functionally unusable.

So, if you are nostalgic already for the old classic, then you should try to use some of your holiday break to jump into a match or two. Unfortunately, though, servers aren’t online, so you’ll have to play against bots.

In the meantime, all eyes shift to CS2, and Valve’s plans for future content there. The game had a rocky release, and player counts have fallen, but the community is hopeful that future updates will restore Counter-Strike to its former glory.