Why pros are raging at Valve over CS2 performance

Players whose computers can’t handle CS2 smoothly can breathe a sigh of relief as even professional players on beastly rigs are dealing with terrible performance.

Counter-Strike games were known for their ability to run even on ancient computers at a decent FPS. Of course, players couldn’t win a major on those specs, but it offered a nice gaming experience. However, that is no longer true for the recent installment in Valve’s flagship series. According to pro players, fans need a “NASA computer” to run CS2 properly. Taking to X, Jonathan “EliGE” Jablonowski addressed various issues in CS2 that have recently come to light, including missed jumps and sound errors.

However, the pro player said that it’s the performance that needs to be addressed most in CS2.

CS2 performance issues make game stutter on pro-level builds

Valve has been rolling out fixes for jump and boost issues in CS2, but it seems like they keep spawning. The most recent one was spotted at BLAST Premier when Robin “Ropz” Kool missed several jumps on the Dust 2’s B site window. EliGe noted that and said something was also off with the game’s performance as well, as it feels extremely laggy on pro-level PC builds.

The pro player explained that the game may deliver 500 FPS while you’re looking at the wall, but it drops dramatically when “actually playing the game.” While giving an example of Ancient A site and Nuke upper, he said the game starts to stutter as soon as there’s action on screen. This has been the case for players on lower-end PCs who would chalk them up to their measly specs, but it turns out everyone is in the same boat.

This was backed by CS2 players in the comments who think the game’s optimization needs instant attention from Valve, which could be causing CS2 to jitter on medium to high-level gaming builds. CS2 caster Mamoon “TeaTime” Sabri noted that his computer with respectable specifications has started to show signs of struggle, with stuttering issues impacting gameplay.

“I’ve gone from being able to very comfortably stream on my new computer at the beginning of the year to now even Discord live streaming makes my game lag,” said TeaTime.

It’s tough to pinpoint the reason for this, but CS2 performance issues seem uniform across maxed-out rigs and low specs. This suggests that the problem may lie with the game’s optimization rather than individual hardware capabilities.