28 September 2023: This article has been updated after the release of Counter-Strike 2.
The release of Counter-Strike 2 is just around the corner, which means loads of improvements for professional players and casual gamers alike.
With 10 years of experience in esports, Ludvig Fröberg, Engineering Manager at Abios, goes through the latest developments in CS2, what it means for the esports industry, and most importantly, how seamlessly Abios’ customers can take part in its data.
The release of Counter-Strike 2 has undoubtedly taken up ample space in the esports news cycle recently. What has been whispers and rumours for years has finally become a full-blown announcement: The sequel to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has officially been released.
It comes with long-awaited updates to the match-making system, tick rate and game engine. Many of which esports fans and professionals have been dreaming of for years.
The professional scene has been in equal turmoil. After the epic last CS:GO major played in Paris in May 2023, professionals, industry analysts and fans are all equally ready to upgrade their playing field.
At Abios, we have a long history of covering CS:GO, offering data from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to esports fans through our customers since 2015.
We decided to ask Ludvig Fröberg, Engineering Manager at Abios and an esports industry veteran, what CS2 means for Abios customers and the global esports ecosystem.
What changes in Counter-Strike 2 will have the largest impact on casual play?
CS2 comes with a load of changes, altering how casual players experience and interact with the game.
CS:GO has long been plagued by a flawed match-making system. New players were prone to get matched against experienced opponents, making the climb up the competitive ladder hard and disheartening.
The game also featured a weak anti-cheat system, resulting in many gamers getting stomped by opponents with aim bots or wall hacks.
Both issues got to the point where external actors such as Esportal and FaceIT launched their servers, tackling cheaters and allowing better players to go against opponents with a similar matchmaking rating(MMR).
Among other things, CS2 will feature a robust match-making system and anti-cheat software called ‘VAC Live’, making the casual gaming experience better for everyone.
And how will CS2 impact competitive gaming and esports?
Many changes that come with Counter-Strike 2 stem from switching the game engine to Source 2. Among other things, it will make water puddles shinier and glass shattering on impact more lifelike. While these changes impact ‘quality of life’ when playing, they wouldn’t necessarily have a big impact on professional play.
However, changes in tick rates, smokes, maps and even in-game sounds, as well as MR 12, will certainly mean that professional players and casual gamers alike need to relearn some aspects of the game. Shooting or throwing HE grenades through smokes makes it dissipate for a second or two, allowing players to find new ways to enter sites or find cheeky kills.
How much this impacts gameplay is hard to tell, but professional esports teams get to practise in CS2 as we speak, which means they will certainly have new tactics and strategies to try once the fall circuits begin.
The CS:GO fans have waited patiently for CS2 for years. Now it’s finally here. When can we expect the first professional matches to be played?
Notable tournaments that will be played in CS2 include Roobet Cup. 25 Oct – 02 Nov 2023 and Thunderpick World Championship. 27 Oct – 05 Nov 2023.
RELATED: Check out the fall Counter-Strike tournament calendar here.
How does that affect data collection? Will Abios capture the same amount of data points in CS2 as in CS:GO?
It is an interesting question. Even if it will look and feel familiar, CS2 is a brand-new game from the ground up. This means that things will change. We are sure they will be for the better. The game will still track the same data points, just in a more reliable format as we are used to from Dota 2, another Source 2 title.
We have built our database with a title-agnostic approach to make it seamless for us as well as our customers, to add, switch between, and remove games. This is handy when games such as Overwatch or CS:GO do a major overhaul, as we can easily make the switch while still collecting the same data points. Based on our testing of CS2, the data points we collect should remain the same.
In short, this means that Abios’ customers will be able to access the same amount of stream-live data and data points in CS2 as in CS:GO.
How will the switch between Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Counter-Strike 2 affect Abios’ customers?
Valve Corporation has stated that Counter-Strike 2 will act as a “free upgrade to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive”. So what does that mean? CS:GO will cease to exist but all content, such as skins and stickers, will be transferred to the new game. Much like when Activision Blizzard switched out Overwatch for Overwatch 2.
As such, we’re not planning to keep the games side by side either. Instead, we will integrate Counter-Strike 2 with the same endpoint our customers have previously used for CS:GO.
This will make the switch seamless for both API and Widgets customers, as there will be no need for developers to add support for new endpoints.
The CS:GO endpoint will supply CS2 data in the same format as before as soon as tournaments are played in the sequel. The only difference will be that the game will be renamed from CS:GO to CS on the /games endpoint and in the documentation.
What will happen to all the historical data Abios has in CS:GO? Will I still be able to access it for my esports products?
All historical data from CS:GO will be accessible through our CS endpoint. This means that once a tournament starts in CS2, your database will seamlessly start to receive data from it while continuing to populate previous data fields with CS:GO data.
Event feeds such as calendars, schedules, and results will be populated as if nothing would have changed.
How will I be able to differentiate between data from CS:GO and CS2?
For customers wanting to compare player performance or team metrics between the different esports titles or simply want to be able to keep datasets apart, we will add a field describing the version of the game for each data layer.
It can look something like this:
{
“game_release_version”: “cs2”,
…
}
What should I do if I’m not a customer today but would like to get hold of data for the upcoming fall circuit in CS2?
At Abios, we deliver millions of data points monthly to customers worldwide. CS:GO, soon CS2, is one of our core titles in which we track a myriad of data points, from player kills with any given weapon to flash assists, headshots and kills through smokes (we even track the number of chickens killed in a match!).
For companies looking to display CS2 schedules, create in-depth statistics platforms or compare team results, Abios has data-driven tools to obtain, visualise and analyse data seamlessly.
Do you want to get Counter-Strike 2 data for your next project?
Contact our sales team at [email protected] or learn more here!
