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Recently, an NVIDIA driver update was released, and eagle-eyed users began spotting references to what could be CSGO on the Source 2 engine. If this is to be believed as factual, then it could mean that almost eight years after the engine was released, CSGO could finally be porting over to it. For over a decade, CSGO has lived and breathed the original Source engine, which is close to celebrating its twentieth birthday.

Could CSGO be about to receive a major update that’ll change how the game looks and feels forever?

Dota 2 was the first game to emerge on the Source 2 engine, and since then, other Valve titles have followed. It’s the most up-to-date engine for the legendary developer, but for some reason, the organisation’s biggest game, CSGO, has never been upgraded to use it. It’s something that has been on the table for years, but owing to an ‘if-it-isn’t-broke’ mentality, Valve has neglected to make that ultimate upgrade.

There’s a chance it could be disruptive to the many CSGO esports tournaments that play out every year, of course. There’s no doubt that the CSGO esports scene is immensely popular, and with peak player count records being smashed every few weeks on Steam, there’s still an enormous and competitive audience for this game. As you can likely imagine, that audience – and the esports scene – would be impacted quite heavily by the considerable overhaul that Source 2 would bring.

Here’s the original comment from Twitter that references the potential change:

At present, fans of the franchise are wondering when the next CSGO operation will surface, but it may be that something much more monumental is on the horizon. It’s clearly referenced in the files above as ‘CSGOS2’, and experts are busy racking their brains to think of anything else that the term could be describing.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Source 2?

There will always be those asking if CSGO is dying, but at present, the ten-year-old game is stronger than ever. It was just days ago that CSGO smashed its all-time player peak count record on Steam, soaring above 1.3 million concurrent users. There’s a vibrant esports community that serves as the beating heart of CSGO, and it’s statistically the most popular esports betting game.

It doesn’t matter if CSGO does upgrade to Source 2 in the coming weeks or months, it’ll still be a massively appreciated game on a global scale. There are expectations that Valve will roll out the Source 2 upgrade slowly, first putting in place a beta phase to gather feedback from fans and critics ahead of a global, universal rollout of the new engine. It’ll be the most major update CSGO has seen in more than ten years of being online.