Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's popularity has continued to increase since its release way back in 2012, and today, it remains the most played game on Steam each week, boasting over one million concurrent players. Now, Valve has launched Counter-Strike 2, a graphical and technological update that upgrades Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to the Source 2 engine, leveraging newer graphics APIs for improved fidelity and responsiveness. NVIDIA has worked with Valve to make sure system latency, which is critical to winning, is at an absolute minimum with the addition of NVIDIA Reflex.

In competitive shooters such as Counter-Strike 2, higher FPS and lower system latency allows you to acquire targets faster, react more quickly, and increase aim precision. On a GeForce RTX 40 Series PC or laptop, your skill won't be constrained by system latency, or frame rates. Get the ultimate Counter-Strike 2 competitive experience, powered by GeForce RTX 40 Series for unbeatable performance, and NVIDIA Reflex for the lowest latency. Gamers with a compatible graphics card can enable NVIDIA Reflex in Counter-Strike 2 to reduce system latency by up to 35%.

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.

THE NEXT ERA OF COUNTER-STRIKE BEGINS THIS SUMMER

Counter-Strike 2 is the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike's history, ensuring new features and updates for years to come. All of the game's new features will be revealed when it officially launches this summer, but the road to Counter-Strike 2 begins today as a Limited Test for select CS:GO players. During this testing period, we'll be evaluating a subset of features to shake out any issues before the worldwide release.

Counter-Strike 2 arrives this summer as a free upgrade to CS:GO. So build your loadout, hone your skills, and prepare yourself for what's next! Read on to learn more about some of the features of the Counter-Strike 2 Limited Test.

The wildly popular and decade-spanning Counter Strike: Global Offensive set a new all-time concurrent player record over the weekend of 1,420,183 according to SteamDB's tracking. While CS:GO may possibly be looking toward a sunset later this month as rumors of a sequel loom overhead, the game has continued to enjoy a steady increase in players over the past few weeks. A prior record set only a few weeks ago in February finally broke the all-time record of 1,308,963 set way back in 2020, and there was nearly enough momentum to break the record again within 24 hours of the last. Average player numbers are still below that of April 2020's 857,604, but we may yet see even that record broken given the momentum keeps up.

The official CS:GO Twitter account posted a brief congratulations to the player base for setting the record, stating:

Thank you to our 1.4M Twitter followers for organizing and playing CS:GO concurrently today.

Valve Software is giving final touches to its first PC title in close to a decade, and under its cult-classic Counter Strike franchise. The game's tightly-guarded development was leaked to the web in an NVIDIA GeForce software game profiles file, which described its binary executable files as "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". VideoGames Chronicle dug deeper and discovered that the game has been in development at Valve for some time now, and is designed to be a modern e-sports title. It is based on the latest version of the company's in-house Source 2 game engine ("Half Life: Alyx"), and features an advanced multiplayer server architecture that ensures 128-tick, similar to "Valorant." The company is also using an in-house new matchmaking engine. With the emergence of this game on NVIDIA driver profiles, Counter Strike Global Offensive 2 should reach the public in some shape or form (at least an open beta), later this month.

If you thought that your 144 Hz monitor sounds rather fancy, you would have to think again after seeing this. Beijing Oriental Electronics Group Co., Ltd or BOE shortly, has announced that the company has managed to design and manufacture a 27-inch full HD display with a refresh rate of 500 Hz. No, this is not a typo, and the company made a display with such a high refresh rate. This technology marvel features an 8-lane eDP connection paired with a 1 ms response time and an actual 8-bit color gamut. While this refresh rate may not suit every AAA game title, players of CS: GO, and DOTA 2 are likely targets. Along with this 500 Hz monitor, BOE also announced a 110-inch 8K 120 Hz panel. You can read more about it from the company statement below..

BOE (Machine Translation from Chinese)With years of technology accumulation, BOE has made important breakthroughs in the field of oxide semiconductor display technology, overcoming industry problems such as copper (Cu) easy to diffuse, easy to oxidize, and easy to drill and engrave, and is the first in the industry to achieve mass production of copper interconnect stack structures., and the integration of high refresh rate, high resolution, low power consumption oxide display technology, breaking the foreign monopoly, and continue to launch low power consumption, ultra-narrow bezel, 500Hz+ gaming display, super-sized 8K Oxide 120Hz, A series of high-end technologies and products such as frequency conversion refresh rate display. At the same time, great breakthroughs have been made in the research and development of high mobility 30+ cm 2 / Vsoxide technology, which has laid a technical foundation for the subsequent performance improvement of high-end products.

Just three weeks after having an all-time high number of 28 million concurrent players, Steam has managed to break another record and provide its services to 29.2 million gamers across the globe. According to the data from SteamDB, there were 29,201,174 concurrent gamers were utilizing Valve's Steam platform and playing their favorite game without realizing that they were breaking a world record. And of course, the highest contributor to this record are online multiplayer games such as Dota 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which achieved 900K and 787K active players in the last 24 hours. This shows an excellent trend for Valve's Steam platform, and we are just a shy away from seeing 30 million concurrent gamers playing "side by side."

Gabe Newell who is currently residing in New Zealand has recently confirmed in a new interview that his company Valve "definitely has games in development that they're going to be announcing". With the positive release of Half-Life: Alyx the company plans to create further single-player games and Gabe noted that there is a lot of momentum within Valve to do so.

Gabe Newell has been living with his family in New Zealand since early 2020 when they decided to stay in the country after a holiday due to the countries successful management of COVID-19. He has now been granted New Zealand residency in principle and is actively considering transferring Valve operations and major events to the country. This includes hosting the companies DOTA 2 and CS:GO annual esports tournaments which had to be canceled in 2020 and "strong interest" from employees for relocation.

By introducing the latest versions of the XMG NEO 15 and NEO 17 gaming laptops, XMG is among the first manufacturers worldwide to offer high-resolution WQHD displays featuring a refresh rate of 165 Hz. Since the launch of the first series in 2018, XMG NEO laptops have been providing maximum gaming performance following a long tradition of innovation and integrating cutting-edge technology ahead of the competition. As part of a sales promotion for Black Friday, the company is offering both laptops at a substantial discount via its own online store bestware.com.

The demand for fast, high-resolution and fully gaming-ready displays in laptops has been on the rise among the gaming community for several years now. This comes as no surprise, since mobile processors and graphics cards from NVIDIA, Intel and AMD have recently been able to catch up with their desktop counterparts in terms of overall gaming performance. While Full HD displays were previously the established standard even in most high-end devices, XMG now believes that the time has come to switch to a higher resolution: the NEO 15 and NEO 17 are therefore now available with a 165 Hz WQHD IPS display, complementing the existing 240 Hz Full HD option. The new high-resolution display offers razor sharp image quality thanks to its impressively high pixel density of 188 ppi (15.6 inch) and 170 ppi (17.3 inch) respectively. For comparison, external 4K UHD monitors in the popular 27 inch size class offer no more than 163 ppi. While the excellent sRGB colour space coverage is almost 100 percent, the brightness reaches well above 300 nits.

AMD late Thursday released the latest version of Radeon Software Adrenalin 2020 graphics drivers. Version 20.7.1 beta adds optimization for "Disintegration." The software also introduces an improved AMD Bug Report Tool. A number of bugs were fixed with this release including stuttering observed on machines running RX 5000 series GPUs with Radeon Replay enabled; "Vega" based graphics cards experiencing performance loss with Performance Metrics enabled; an error switching between apps while previewing your stream; custom fan- and clock- tuning settings not applying in Radeon Performance tuning tab or retaining after reboot; and display resolution failing to stretch with display scaling enabled in CS:GO. Bugs related to Valorant, DOTA2, and DOOM Eternal were also fixed. Grab the drivers from the link below.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Radeon Software Adrenalin 20.7.1 Beta

XPG, a provider of high-performance products for gamers, e-sports pros, and tech enthusiasts, is pleased to announce that it has become the Official Gaming Notebook sponsor of the official Valve RMR CS:GO Online tournament series CS_SUMMIT 6.Organized by Beyond the Summit (BTS), the tournament will take place from June 22 to July 5. As a part of the sponsorship, the XPG XENIA will be the Official Gaming Notebook of the tournament.

CS_SUMMIT 6 will be broadcast internationally and is organized regionally with qualifying games in Europe and North America. XPG will be the major sponsor of the event in the Gaming Notebook category.This is the second time XPG has participated in a BTS-organized tournament as a sponsor. During CS_SUMMIT 5, XPG was the Official Keyboard sponsor.

SteelSeries, the leader in PC gaming peripherals, today announces the new Neon Rider collection inspired by Red Moon Workshop's beloved CS:GO skin. This exclusive collaboration combines the popular Neon Rider skin and SteelSeries' award-winning peripherals to create an exciting collection specifically made for CS:GO enthusiasts around the world. The collection includes a Neon Rider designed Sensei Ten, and Qck L and QcK Prism XL mousepads.

Our relationship with Counter-Strike is as old as we are. From creating the first products for competitive players, to being the first professional sponsors for teams and events, to creating products just for fans of the game, we are proud to continue to be a part of the world of Counter-Strike with this exclusive collaboration. With the high performing sensor and comfort of the Sensei Ten and massive size of the QcK, we picked these products to be the perfect additions to any CS:GO player's setup.

Razer, the leading global lifestyle brand for gamers, today announced the Huntsman Tournament Edition (TE) compact gaming keyboard designed for esports tournaments.

The Huntsman TE joins the Huntsman premium keyboard family built with Razer's ultra-fast light activated Optical Switches. After its introduction in June 2018, the critically acclaimed Razer Huntsman Elite has taken the world by storm, becoming the best selling gaming keyboard in the U.S. The Huntsman TE, the latest addition to Razer's lineup of high-performance gaming keyboards, now features a new type of optical switch that actuates even faster - the Razer Linear Optical Switch.

Valve has brought about an update to their eons-old competitive shooter CS:GO. The update brings the game to the modern, post-Fortnite era of multiplayer games, with a new Battle Royale mode named "Danger Zone". The "Danger Zone" Battle Royale mode cuts the number of maximum players to 18, though, which is a far cry from other market offerings - but has designed to mode so that each match lasts at most 10 minutes, which should bring about some escalating tension despite the reduced number of players compared to other Battle Royale game modes. The usual "save the hostages" mechanic has been baked into the mode as a way for players to make money, which they can use to purchase weapons, a la classic CS fashion.

The other move that Valve has made in order to boost popularity of CS:GO has been to make the game free to play, waiving the usual $15 entry fee. It just wasn't justifiable, it seems, to keep such a price on a game released back in 2012 - especially not when compared to the money-making prowess of Fortnite.

Leading gaming headset and audio accessory brand Turtle Beach (NASDAQ: HEAR) officially enters the PC gaming headset market with today's announcement that the company's all-new Atlas line of headsets built for PC is now available at participating retailers worldwide. Designed in collaboration with leading esports teams, including Astralis, OpTic Gaming, and the Houston Outlaws, Turtle Beach's Atlas line features three different models, including the Elite Atlas Pro Performance PC Gaming Headset, the powerful Atlas Three Amplified PC Gaming Headset, and the versatile Atlas One PC Gaming Headset. Each Atlas headset offers PC gamers an innovative set of features, functionality and pricing, starting with the Elite Atlas with a MSRP of £89.99, and the Atlas Three and Atlas One with MSRPs of £69.99 and £39.99, respectively. Read below for full details of each Atlas PC gaming headset.

"We worked with some of the best pro gamers in the world to make sure our new Atlas line delivers PC gamers the superior audio performance and comfort Turtle Beach is known for," said Juergen Stark, CEO, Turtle Beach. "Turtle Beach's success is rooted in our ability to innovate and offer a broad portfolio of products designed for all types of gamers, from professional competitive esports athletes to those just getting into gaming, and that's what we're now bringing to the PC market with our Atlas headsets. We knew we needed more than just a single offering, so we built the Atlas lineup to cater to the various types of PC gamers out there - whether they're shopping based on specific features or budget."

MSI, a world leader in gaming hardware, has partnered with ESL for its MSI Gaming Arena (MGA) 2018 World Championship and as the exclusive gaming sponsor of the ESL One 2018 Grand Finals at the Barclays Center in New York on September 29 and 30.MGA 2018 World Championship
Before the Grand Final, MSI Gaming Arena (MGA) 2018 will host the world's top Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams fighting for the coveted MGA Trophy and $60,000 prize pool on September 30 at the Barclays Center in New York. After the regional qualifiers, the four remaining teams will secure their spot in the MGA 2018 CS:GO Grand Finals.

Following Valve's decision to disable trading in the Netherlands due to that country's legal statutes regarding gambling, the company is now taking other steps to comply with the country's Dutch Gaming Authority. Players in the Netherlands and Belgium "will be restricted from opening containers" following this week's patch, according to the patch notes. This will prevent players in those countries from even opening the lootboxes. As the "Miscellaneous" section of the patch notes reads:

• Updated Steam and CS:GO account restrictions for users in Netherlands and Belgium:
• Steam Trading and Steam Market features are now re-enabled for Steam accounts in Netherlands.
• Customers in Netherlands and Belgium will be restricted from opening containers.

Not long ago, the Netherlands ruled that loot boxes in games are gambling, and have been designed to get people addicted, in order to spend more money. Gaming companies had until June 20 (yesterday) to either change their game mechanics accordingly or to apply for a gambling license.

This has now caused Valve to disable trading of items on CS:GO and Dota 2, as the current interpretation of the law has a little loophole that considers loot boxes as gambling only, when the in-game goods are transferable between players.

Logitech G, a brand of Logitech, today announced the Logitech G PRO Gaming Headset, offering esports-grade audio performance and features for professional and competitive gamers. The newest addition to the Logitech G PRO lineup of professional gaming gear, the Logitech G PRO Gaming Headset is lightweight, strong and extremely comfortable for extended gameplay. It features Logitech G Pro-G drivers for superior audio, premium leatherette ear pads for excellent noise isolation and a pro-grade condenser microphone for crystal-clear communications. With the clarity and quality of the most advanced gaming headset speaker, gamers can hear every approaching enemy footstep in super-efficient detail. The Logitech G PRO Gaming Headset has also been named the official headset of Electronic Sports League (ESL) CS:GO Pro League, ESL One and ESL Premiership, and will be the headset of choice for several top teams and players.

"As a leading gaming gear manufacturer, we develop what esport professionals, players and enthusiasts are looking for," said Ujesh Desai, vice president and general manager of Logitech Gaming. "The PRO headset was developed in close collaboration with TSM, G2 Esports and London Spitfire players. Our design includes features such as a tournament-grade mic and comfortable leatherette for the perfect headset for esports and pro gamers."

Valve was one of the first to run a centralized game distribution + multiplayer service, through Steam, and its in-house alternative to the Punkbuster anti-cheating software, in the form of VAC (Valve Anti-Cheating). Over the years, VAC has evolved to leverage newer technologies. Its latest avatar is VACnet, an AI deep-learning system built up of over 1,700 CPUs, to more intelligently sniff out cheaters. VACnet leverages CS:GO's player-operated replay system. It studies replays of players who have been reported for cheating, and studies their replays for patterns of cheating, such as wallhacks, aimbots, and more.

What makes this different from previous approaches to the problem is that the AI evaluates the behavior of the gamer through their inputs in a way only a human could, before this. It also makes up its own criteria for spotting cheaters, as it learns more about cheating, so creative and new cheaters are quicker to spot. The decision to suspend or ban players ultimate falls in the hands of humans. VACnet sniffs out the most probable cheaters, and reports its findings to human moderators that determine guilt, and hand out suspensions or bans. VACnet has the potential to increase "convictions" of cheaters by close to four fold.

PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) wasn't the first battle royale game to exist, but it certainly was the one that put the genre on the map. PUBG has been surrounded by success since its early access in March. The game has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, and it's in the number one spot on Steam's most-played games list. Veteran titles like Dota 2 and CS:GO don't come close to putting up the kind of numbers like PUBG did. In Valve News Network's latest video, the Youtuber analyzed the last ten CS:GO patches, and he found many references to a survival mode. The references include adrenaline shots, compound bows, Mk 2 grenades, medic kits, parachutes, drones, fist-to-fist combat, beacons, a new survival island map, and many battle royale related content. Although it's too soon to tell, but it looks like Valve has bitten the bullet and might implement a battle royale mode into CS:GO to attract more players.