Counter-Strike 2 maps and badge earning will never be the same again after developers of the game have reportedly made community-made maps available in the game and a plethora of new quality-of-life updates.

In keeping with the legacy of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and other games that came before this iteration of the tactical shooter, Valve Corp. announced on Wednesday that community-made maps would now be included in Counter-Strike 2, released in September 2023.

The maps are Assembly, which takes place in an aircraft manufacturing plant, and Memento, which is themed around an Italian wedding. Operators can be seen plunging through a wedding cake, a la Guns N' Roses in the music video "November Rain." 

Another map is Mills, set in the Low Countries and supporting a wide-open map. Next is Thera, a narrow, old-world city street that funnels into activity areas with Mediterranean Greek themes. The last community-made map is Pool Day, which resembles a tense, cramped meeting held inside a fitness center. 

Pool Day is an Arms Race map; Memento and Assembly are in the Wingman map rotation; and Thera and Mills are in the Competitive, Casual, and Deathmatch map groups.

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Counter-Strike 2's Badge-Earning

The community maps are an update component that facilitates badge-earning for players. Players may now customize their video settings more effectively, and the MVP Panel, which recognizes the finest player in a match, is redesigned to commemorate the accomplishment.

The update has also fixed several other issues, such as G-Sync detection's ability to operate in fullscreen non-windowed mode. The update also resolves the issue where users with non-English keyboards might still see the US English keyboard layout loaded and finally fixes the obnoxious empty radio command string that plays when the planted C4 is a few seconds away from detonating. 

With 1.8 million concurrent players at its highest point last year and 1.3 million in the last day alone, Counter-Strike 2 has become easily the most popular game on Steam. That is over twice as many gamers as PUBG Battlegrounds, which is in second place. 

Recent Counter-Strike 2 Updates

One of the other recent updates for Counter-Strike 2 is the return of Arms Race, also referred to as Gun Game.  To advance in this game mode, players must kill with the weapon they begin the fight with. Following each kill, they are given a new weapon. In this manner, the victor is the first person to use every weapon in the game.

Since Arms Race may be an excellent way to warm up and get your hands on the game's weaponry before playing ranked, it's no surprise that the game mode is also a popular favorite for competitive play. Arms Race has always been fun for cooperative play. The Kilowatt case, CS2's first weapon case, has also arrived. It provides 17 finishes with community design. 

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