Valve’s Counter-Strike 2 is now officially available, replacing Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Describing it as “the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come.” Announced back in March, Counter-Strike 2 brings plenty of new features, updated maps, and more.

In a blog post announcing the availability, Valve says that returning players will find their favorite maps and matchmaking modes, as well as a revamped Premier mode for the new CS Rating. The biggest update is the sub-tick architecture, promising that the server will now know “the exact instant that motion starts, a shot is fired, or a ‘nade is thrown.” Valve also released the new patch, launching the game and bringing some fixes and new features and modes that were previously unavailable.

Counter-Strike 2 already has very positive reviews over at Steam, and it is already at the top of the “top seller” list, leaving behind Cyberpunk 2077, Dota 2, and PUBG: Battlegrounds. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive managed to hit a peak of 1,8 million concurrent players in April, so it remains to be seen if Counter-Strike 2 will be able to break that record.

Here are the full release notes for the latest patch.

COUNTER-STRIKE 2

• Counter-Strike 2 is now available and free to play
• Season One of Premier has begun

GAMEPLAY

• Enabled Competitive matchmaking
• Enabled Wingman matchmaking
• Enabled Private Matchmaking
• Added Training Day, a brief introductory experience for brand new players
• Improved player-against-player movement collision
• Improved consistency of bullet penetration
• Player reflections in water are now occluded by smoke
• Molotov fire now floats above the water
• Fixed character ambient occlusion being visible through walls
• C4 bomb lights don’t reflect through walls
• Fixed some rare cases of viewmodel lighting corruption
• Adjusted smoke behavior to cover cases where smoke would stop less than a player’s height above the ground
• Fix various bugs with switching teams in the middle of offline Deathmatch
• Fixed Famas reloading too early
• Chickens can finally fall off Vertigo

SOUND

• Added the new CS2 default music kit
• Added new audio customization settings
• Various mix tweaks and adjustments
• Various bug fixes related to music kits
• Updated the game startup sound
• Added background ambience to main menu scenes
• Restored the clutch_mode_toggle function
• Fixed a bug where sometimes c4 defuse and planting sounds could not be heard in certain locations
• Fixed some surfaces being incorrectly tagged causing incorrect footstep sounds in certain locations
• Fixed a bug where attackers could not hear headshot feedback through wallbangs or smokes
• Body damage feedback for attackers will now play within the same distance as it does for onlookers through smokes and wallbangs
• Fixed a bug where scoping in affected directional sound
• First person damage sounds are now more impactful
• Removed several legacy audio convars that existed in CS:GO but never had an effect in CS2

ANIMATION

• Adjusted character additive lean animation
• Adjusted jump animation, particularly when repeatedly jumping
• Adjusted jiggle-peeking animation
• Adjusted animated character head position relative to camera position
• Added bullet belt to negev
• Reduced foot sliding when carrying slower weapons
• Fixed character momentarily standing during crouch-planting animation
• Fixed incorrect viewmodel deploy speeds
• Fixed pops in some weapon inspect animations
• Inspecting weapons may now interrupt deploy animation

MATCHMAKING

• When one or more party members get convicted of cheating and permanently banned, all their associates will be penalized with loss of Profile Rank and CS Rating
• In Premier, players with a very high established CS Rating are not allowed to party with accounts that do not have an established CS Rating

MAPS

• Various bug fixes and tweaks for all shipped maps
• Adjusted vertical audio occlusion boundaries in Nuke and Vertigo
• Added an extra bell in Inferno
• Casual and Deathmatch maps are now separated into multiple map groups

MISC

• CS:GO Players who started playing more than a week ago will receive a commemorative CS:GO coin and CS:GO Music Kit
• Added Store tab to main menu
• Enabled all interactions with inventory items
• Replaced weekly drops with a weekly Care Package. Choose from weapon cases, weapon finishes, and graffiti
• Added demo playback support
• Added the ability to favorite and shuffle loadout items
• Added new item icons
• Office and Vertigo are available as main menu scenery
• Various updates for weapon finishes, including fixing overly strong wear on several Custom Paint Job finishes
• Reworked Phoenix Street Soldier balaclava texture to resolve visibility issues
• Enabled animated eyes on agent character models

WORKSHOP TOOLS

• Game clients running in workshop tools mode are not allowed to connect to VAC secure game servers
• Added an all-new help system featuring contextually relevant guides and information. Guides include gray scale value ranges for alpha channel masking, paint-by-number mask color assignments based on current finish type, and much more!
• Removed dynamic props from solid color inspect backgrounds

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