Now that Counter-Strike 2 is well and truly alive, Valve is sunsetting support of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, more than ten years after the game first hit the market. It doesn’t mean CSGO is going offline, but it will remain stuck on its current version forevermore and is now heralded as a ‘legacy’ product. It’s easy to highlight CSGO as one of the most influential games of all time, boasting consistently high player counts, a multi-million-dollar esports ecosystem, a billion-dollar skins market, and a gaming community that transcends borders.
Becoming Legacy
For now, CSGO should work exactly as it ever did, but it’s likely it’ll become shakier as time goes on and Valve continues to work on Counter-Strike 2, applying updates that make the functionality of the now legacy game a little questionable. These details were outlined in the ‘Legacy CSGO Version’ document published by Valve on Steam’s help page.
The legacy version of CS:GO is a frozen build of CS:GO. It has all of the features of CS:GO except for official matchmaking. After January 1, 2024 the game will still be available, but certain functionality that relies on compatibility with the Game Coordinator (e.g., access to inventory) may degrade and/or fail.
For more than a decade, CSGO continued to outclass other shooters time and again, dominating Steam and the PC community and being regarded globally as one of the greatest first-person shooter games to ever be released. While Call of Duty, Battlefield, Rainbow Six, and other titles came and went with each successive year, CSGO remained an eternal constant in the gaming industry.
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