Counter-Strike 2 has enormous boots to fill, and it’s still early days. As the successor to the most popular multiplayer shooter of all time, Valve’s new FPS naturally needs a little time to settle and ease in. CS2 could be better than CSGO, but perhaps, less than a month after launch, we’re not there yet. At the same time, Counter-Strike players have been understandably frustrated about CSGO being – seemingly – removed from the internet forever. But actually, that’s not the case. If you’re not a fan of Counter-Strike 2, or maybe want to give it a bit more time before making the transition, you can still play CSGO on Steam.
Between the new Counter-Strike 2 skins system and Counter-Strike 2 crosshairs, there’s plenty to get your head around for the new generation of Valve’s stalwart FPS game. Counter-Strike 2 has been met with some varied player responses (more on that later) with a lot of criticism directed at the fact that it seems to have completely superseded and replaced Counter-Strike Global Offensive. After more than a decade of CSGO, it’s hard to say goodbye, especially when the new iteration is still subject to issues. But actually, CSGO is still playable, and via Steam no less.
A legacy version of CSGO is now accessible via the Counter-Strike 2 Steam library. If you want to get in, all you need to do is find CS2 in your Steam library, right click, select ‘properties,’ then select ‘betas.’ In the drop-down menu, you should find an option for the CSGO legacy version. This is a frozen build of Global Offensive that you can, in theory, play forever. But there’s a catch.
Official matchmaking for CSGO is no longer supported. Similarly, on Monday, January 1, 2024, Valve will no longer offer any support for CSGO whatsoever, so any technical issues, bugs, or problems you experience thereafter will not receive official fixes. So, CSGO still exists, and ought to still be playable via community servers. But official support is going away, and if you want to access it, you need to go through the Counter-Strike 2 page.
Nevertheless, this feels truer to the Counter-Strike lineage. 1.6 and Counter-Strike Source are still accessible, so it only follows that CSGO remains available, too. As for the response to Counter-Strike 2, it just became the lowest-rated game Valve has ever released.
If you’re trying out CS2, get the Counter-Strike 2 best binds, to play like a pro. You can also maximize the shooter’s performance with the strongest Counter-Strike 2 settings for PC.