A new discovery in the latest NVIDIA drivers has sparked rumors about the possibility of a new Counter-Strike game being in development. The speculation comes after a fan discovered two new profiles in the latest NVIDIA drivers. The driver version number has not been specified but it has been reported that these profiles appeared sometime in February. The profiles list two executables, csgos2.exe, and cs2.exe which have people wondering if a second game could be in the works.
Something weird just happened. Latest NVIDIA drivers introduced support for unknown app executables called "csgos2.exe" and "cs2.exe". Why project is called Counter-Strike 2 and what are you cooking @csgo? https://t.co/U9YKlAjwgy pic.twitter.com/PU8Op9uGLq
— Gabe Follower (@gabefollower) March 1, 2023
According to PCGamesN, who has reached out to Valve for comment and is awaiting a response, the original post was spotted by Reddit user u/DAOWAce who reported finding it via a CSGO content creator by the name of Aquarius “Aquaismissing”. It has since been clarified that one of the executable listings (cs2.exe) is nothing more than a leftover reference from 2014. However, the other is still unknown and while the original Counter-Strike is now over twenty years old, and CSGO came out in 2012, these releases do show about a 10-12 year release window which could align with another game coming out in 2023-2024.
Rumors from a remaster using the Source 2 engine to a full-on new game are spreading but as Aquarius also had more to say on the matter, “it might be that ‘Counter-Strike’ was taken (by 1.6) and Valve devs got lazy, so they just added ‘2’ at the end.”
Meanwhile, it should also be noted that in September 2022 a Valve product designer did confirm that many games are in development. Factor in this discovery and that statement, the hopes that from Half-Life to Portal, and now Counter-Strike, fans are expressing interest in the company revisiting multiple titles. As with any rumors, this could be nothing but Valve clearly seems to be working on something after so many discoveries have happened in recent years. Another rumor was about the possibility of it adding ray tracing to the Source 2 engine in 2021, a feature now commonly found in modern games, and then of course came the recent Portal with RTX release in December 2022.