Valve has officially announced Counter-Strike 2, after weeks of rumors the sequel to CS:GO is now official. We have a bunch of upgrades that are baked into Counter-Strike 2, including the big move over to Valve's in-house Source 2 engine.

Counter-Strike 2 will also usher in gameplay enhancements, and big upgrades to how smoke grenades work... something the developer dived into in a video that we've embedded below, where smoke grenades in CS2 will now live as volumetric 3D objects within the game world. This means smoke will respond to other gameplay elements, allowing players to shape sightlines or enemies with bullets and explosions.

Valve says that the Counter-Strike 2 team is using a three-tier approach to level design, where "Touchstone" maps including Dust 2 will not be changed... apart from lighting and readability. "Upgrade" maps will feature all of the goodies that the newer Source 2 engine is capable of enhanced lighting pipeline that will see more realistic-looking materials and reflections, while Valve teases to fully overhaul a bunch of levels so that they can take advantage of the full feature-set of the Source 2 engine.

Another big upgrade that Valve is performing with Counter-Strike 2 is the game server architecture, with CS2 supporting sub-tick updates, something that Valve says will allow the game's server to know the INSTANT that players move, fire their weapon, or throw a grenade. This means that it will be the most responsive Counter-Strike, ever.

Counter-Strike 2 will debut later this year, acting as a free upgrade to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). Better yet, any cosmetics that you've collected over the years with CS:GO will transition over to CS2, while some gamers can get into the Counter-Strike 2 limited beta test, right now.

Read more about Counter-Strike 2 right here.