Counter-Strike 2 is one of the worst games from Valve on Steam just under 2 weeks after its release. Only a card game is worse.
Counter-Strike 2 celebrated its release on September 27 and officially replaced CS:GO as its successor. The tactical shooter came with several changes such as revised maps, a new ranked mode, a polished look, and an overhaul of the smoke grenades.
CS2 also brought some issues that fans are bothered by, which resulted in the title receiving poor ratings on Steam – Valve’s own platform. Among them is a bug that affected the hitboxes of characters while crouching.
How do the ratings for CS2 look? Since Counter-Strike 2 uses the same Steam store page as CS:GO did before, the ratings of the tactical shooter initially appear better than they actually are – a strong 88% of all 7.6 million (!) reviews are positive.
However, if you look only at the reviews submitted since September 28, the day after the CS2 release, the sentiment becomes much worse. Of 99,502 reviews, only 55% are positive, meaning 45% of all players rate CS2 negatively (as of October 10, 6:00 PM, via Steam).
This makes CS2 one of the lowest-rated games from Valve. Only a card game called “Artifact” fares worse. While “Artifact Classic” has a 46.79% positive rating, “Artifact Foundry” sits at 54.89% (via SteamDB).
What do players say in their reviews? Players miss CS:GO and the depth that the tactical shooter achieved over the years and lost with the switch to CS2. There is also criticism regarding the servers, matchmaking, and the ongoing cheating problem.
- ‘Terribly bad matchmaking (via Steam)’
- ‘Valve just released an unfinished game to completely erase CS:GO. Sorry, but why Valve? (via Steam)’
- ‘Cool that you pulled a new engine with new graphics and effects from the basement and stuck it on the game, but did you completely throw out matchmaking and anti-cheat, or what is now the premise (via Steam)?’
- ‘The CS2 update is simply unfinished. It looks nice, but it’s about 10% of what CS:GO once was. Maybe you’ll come back in a year or so (via Steam).’
- ‘No more balancing, no more community maps for training, all spray patterns have changed. No more fun with this crap (via Steam).’
- ‘The CS2 release feels a bit rushed, to be honest. The lack of content in CS2 is noticeable. […] CSGO was a great game and I hope that CS2 becomes one very soon as well (via Steam).’
Not only normal players are currently unimpressed with CS2. Even s1mple, one of the most successful CS players of all time, criticizes the tactical shooter:
One of the best Counter-Strike players of all time says you shouldn’t play CS2 right now
