May Lord Gaben hear us.
Not every game lives long enough to celebrate 25 birthdays, especially these days, but we Counter-Strike aficionados are blessed that our game survived the test of time — and the sky is the limit with CS2.
Counter-Strike fans know the game's potential better than anyone and always think Valve could do more. Arguably, there's no better time to introduce new features to CS2 this year than the 25th Counter-Strike birthday, so esports.gg came up with a wishlist for Gabe Newell himself.
Without further ado, here's everything we want to see in CS2 for the game's 25th birthday.
A new operation
Undoubtedly, one of the things CS2 players miss the most is the operations. These special events debuted throughout CS:GO's history and allowed players to play on new maps, participate in missions, and buy new skins.
However, Valve stopped launching operations for whatever reason despite their popularity. We had 11 operations for CS:GO and the last one, Operation Riptide, was a long time ago. That operation finished in February 2022, and fans have been asking for a new one ever since.
We all know CS2 deserves at least one operation, even if it is the last one, and there's no better time to introduce one than now.
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A better anticheat
Listen, we all know at this point that efficient third-party matchmaking services exist and that players should play there if they want to be competitive. But that doesn't mean that CS2's official matchmaking should be as full of blatant cheaters as it currently is.
Many players don't want the hassle of downloading third-party services, they just want to open up CS2 and play a match as fast as they can. But, with the ever-growing number of cheaters in matchmaking, eventually some of us migrate to a game with better anticheat (cough cough VALORANT).
Though Valve added a promising feature in the form of VAC Live for CS2, it hasn't been enough to keep cheaters away from our Premier games. And everybody in the community would benefit from a better anticheat as it could retain more new players.
A tutorial for new players
Although Counter-Strike has been around forever and is celebrating its 25th birthday, there are lots of players in CS2 who never played the game before. At first glance, CS2 looks like an easy game, but the more you play it, you start realizing that it takes a long time to improve.
But what tools do new players have to help them get better in CS2? There's not even a tutorial to teach them how to shoot, spray, and throw grenades. If someone wants to improve in CS2, they have to resort to YouTube tutorials made by experts and pros.
Meanwhile, a lot of players quit playing as they think CS2 is too difficult. It would help if Valve made a proper tutorial teaching players the basics of economy, mechanics, utility usage, and how to communicate.
