Counter-Strike 2 launched in September 2023, and on Wednesday, Valve Corp. announced that community-made maps were now being added to the game, carrying on a tradition from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and other games preceding this version of the tactical shooter.
The maps are Memento, which is themed to an Italian wedding (one imagines operators diving through a wedding cake like Guns N’ Roses “November Rain” music video) and Assembly, which takes place in an aircraft manufacture facility. Hope it’s not one of Boeing’s plants! Or a subcontractor for that matter.
Then there’s Pool Day, which looks like a tight, close-quarters scrum set inside a health club.
For the Quixotic (or is that pronounced key-HO-tick?), there’s Mills, a wide-open map apparently set in the Low Countries, and Thera, with Mediterranean Greek themes and tight, old-world city streets funneling into action spaces.
Thera and Mills are in the Competitive, Casual, and Deathmatch map groups; Memento and Assembly are in the Wingman map rotation, and Pool Day is an Arms Race map.
The community maps are part of an update that also makes it easier for players to earn badges. The MVP Panel, which calls out the best player in a match, gets a rework to celebrate the achievement, and players also have new ways to optimize their video settings.
Counter-Strike 2 is by far the most-played game on Steam, hitting an all-time peak of 1.8 million concurrent players last year, while logging a peak of 1.3 million players in just the past day. That’s more than double the playership of second-place PUBG Battlegrounds.
Featured image via Steam
