After years of anticipation, Valve has officially announced that Counter-Strike 2, the largest technical leap forward in Counter-Strike’s history, will launch in Summer 2023, and is available in Limited Testing to some CS:GO players right now.

CS2 is a free upgrade to CS:GO, marking the start of a new era of Counter-Strike on Valve’s Source 2 engine. The game’s full range of new features will be announced at launch, but during the limited testing period we’ll be evaluating a subset of those features to get it ready for the worldwide release.

Here’s some of what CS2 will mean for players:

• Upgraded and overhauled maps

• Game-changing dynamic smoke grenades

• Tick-rate-independent gameplay

• Redesigned visual effects and audio

• All of a player’s CS:GO items go with them to CS2