Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Gaming
  3. News

Valve not sure about International-style event for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

By

Dota 2 Tournament 2017
Dota 2 The International/Flickr
Not only is Valve’s own International Dota 2 tournament the largest eSports competition in the world, but its prizes rival those in conventional sports. The International 5 wrapped up last week, with winning team Evil Geniuses taking home $6.6 million of the $18.3 million prize pool.

Dota 2 isn’t the only popular game that Valve has at its disposal, nor is it the only one with a sizable eSports community. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive often sees some of the highest player counts on Steam, second only to Dota 2, and is already a popular game at tournaments. It makes sense that Valve would be planning an International-style event for CS:GO, right?

Recommended Videos

Not anytime soon, according to an IGN interview with Valve’s Erik Johnson. While Johnson didn’t flat-out deny that a tournament was a possibility, it’s clear that it isn’t a high priority for Valve at the moment. When asked if a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament was coming Johnson simply replied “I don’t know that it has to be coming.”

Related

“We’re pretty comfortable with different projects taking different approaches to solve similar problems,” Johnson told IGN. “As a company we actually learn more when we do that. If we all point everything in the same direction, we’d have a real blind spot for when we’re screwing up. In some ways, you want to diversify a bunch of decisions across different projects because you zero in on the right answer quickly, as opposed to ‘we have this thing that’s working, everybody do that right now.'”

So what is the company focusing on? For the time, Dota 2 Reborn, which is essentially a port of Dota 2 to Valve’s new Source 2 engine. With The International out of the way for another year, the company is ramping up efforts on moving its most popular game to the new engine.

“Fundamentally what Source 2 does is let everyone at Valve who makes game content be more efficient, it allows us to do everything more efficiently,” Johnson explained.

As for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, it’s likely that the game will also make its way to the Source 2 engine, but there is currently no word of when this might happen. “I’m sure it’ll end up on Source 2 at some point,” Johnson said.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Kris Wouk
Kris Wouk
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…
How to get to Monkey Island in Sea of Thieves
An election poster for guybrush in Sea of Thieves.

Over the course of its many years of updates and expansions, Sea of Thieves has had a few notable crossovers with other pirate franchises. The Pirates of the Caribbean crossover let you team up with the legendary Jack Sparrow, but the Monkey Island content felt like it came out of nowhere. For those unaware, Monkey Island is a series of pirate point-and-click games that were as funny as the puzzles were obscure. Thankfully, you don't have to intuit that you need to combine a cat whisker with a mason jar to bypass a skeleton guard to get to this new content, but it is more challenging than you might think.

Read more
3 Xbox Game Pass games you need to play this weekend (May 3-5)
Senua in Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice.

Another weekend is upon us, and you're probably looking for some games to kill time with over the course of it. We're in a bit of a lull right now ahead of a flurry of releases starting next week, so it's a great time to dip back into the Xbox Game Pass catalog and check out some games that you may have missed. There are three games in particular that I think you should check out this weekend if you're looking for something to play.

One is an unsettling adventure that's getting an Xbox-exclusive sequel later this month. The next is a finely animated roguelike indie that recently made its way to Microsoft's gaming subscription service. Finally, there's a relaxing adventure that gives players a lot of freedom, yet is short enough to beat in a weekend. If you're having trouble deciding what to play this weekend, give one of these games a shot.
Hellblade: Senua's Sacrifice

Read more
3 underrated PS Plus games you should play this weekend (May 3-5)
The main character of Tales of Kenzera: Zau stands with two elemental items.

PlayStation Plus Premium and Extra have been around for almost two years, and during that time the subscription service has established itself as an ample competitor to Xbox Game Pass. That means there is a wealth of great games for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5 owners to check out if they're looking for something to play this weekend. I think PS Plus subscribers should be looking toward some of the more underrated games in the subscription service this weekend too.

I have three particular picks in mind. The first is an enjoyable Metroidvania that came to PS Plus' game catalog when it launched just a couple of weeks ago and deserves a lot more attention than it's getting. After that, there's an action-platformer that pays homage to series like Ninja Gaiden that you should check out before it leaves the catalog. Finally, there's a PS2-era Star Wars game that fills the niche a recently canceled game would have.
Tales of Kenzera: Zau

Read more