Highlights
- Counter-Strike 2 has replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, causing the removal of all 167 CS:GO achievements, which has upset some players who had collected them.
- The update to Counter-Strike 2 took place after 6 months of beta testing, with players surprised by the removal of achievements.
- While some players are disappointed, there is hope that Counter-Strike 2 will address issues like cheating with its new VAC Live anti-cheat system.
Counter-Strike 2 has officially replaced Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but while this is an exciting development for the community, any old achievements that they may have had are now gone. Some fans are unhappy about this after collecting all 167 of them, some of which required significant effort. Counter-Strike is known for its high skill ceiling, and this was reflected in the CS:GO achievements.
The update from CS:GO to Counter-Strike 2 took place on September 27, after around 6 months of invite-only beta testing. A lot of information about Counter-Strike 2 was shared during the beta test, but the removal of all the CS:GO achievements is taking some players by surprise.
All 167 CS:GO achievements have been replaced with a single Counter-Strike 2 achievement called "A New Beginning." A Reddit user going by the name TheDudeofDC opened a discussion on the matter, which drew frustrated responses from achievement hunters in the comments. Others were more ambivalent, saying that a lot of people use third-party programs to unlock them anyway and that they have no real-world value. While that sentiment may hold some truth, those who had spent the time and energy collecting the achievements certainly value them.
"To be fair plenty of the GO achievements were broken anyway so good riddance," writes Asdi144, alluding to the fact that some CS:GO achievements had become nearly impossible to get through legitimate means. For example, the "Aztec Map Veteran" achievement is for all intents and purposes unobtainable since Aztec was removed from the map pool in November 2017. Some commenters speculated that Valve might add achievements later on, but there are no known plans to do so as of this writing. Counter-Strike 2 has shown impressive player numbers in spite of this disappointing news and may be on track to break CS:GO's all-time concurrent player record of over 1.8 million.
It doesn't make sense to include achievements that aren't obtainable in Counter-Strike 2, but it is also understandable that players who spent time getting all of them in CS:GO feel upset at the new development. Perhaps Valve will find a way to acknowledge or reward those who had painstakingly collected CS:GO achievements in the future. While some players will be disappointed with Counter-Strike 2 dropping their achievements, there is room for cautious optimism about some of the game's more glaring issues being addressed. Counter-Strike's new VAC Live anti-cheat system will hopefully thin out the rampant herd of cheaters that was often the subject of complaints in CS:GO.
Counter-Strike 2 is now available on PC.