Can You Still Play CS:GO After CS2 Release?

Counter Strike 2 has finally been released as a sequel to the legendary CS:GO game. Many fans are excited to play the new CS2 with all its upgrades and new content. However, some fans are still attached to CS:GO and are wondering if there is any way to play it.

As you will see in this guide, the answer to the question is that you can only somewhat play CS:GO after CS2’s release. We will show you how you can access CS:GO and play it for yourself until Valve makes further changes.

Can You Still Play CS:GO After CS2 Release?

The short answer is Kind of. 

Since CS2 has been released, it has replaced CS:GO when you try to load it up on Steam. This makes it seem as if there really is no way for you to play CS:GO, because if you hit play it loads CS2.

However, there is actually a way where you can open up CS:GO. For more information, read further.

Open your Steam library and look for Counter Strike 2. Right click on the game’s name in the list on the left and click on Properties at the end. This will open up the Properties Menu.

After that click the Betas Tab and you will see an option Beta Participation with a drop down menu.

Click the drop-down menu and select the option: csgo_demo_viewer – 1.38.7.9. This is the latest and most updated version of the CS:GO game before it was replaced by CS2.

Once you select this option, it will start a download of 12.6 GB. It will say that it’s Counter Strike 2 downloading, but do not worry about that.

Just let the download sit until it’s done. Once the download is finished, you will be able to play the latest version of CS:GO.

Hit the Play Button on Counter Strike 2 and this will open a Launch Option Menu. Choose the second option which says Play Counter Strike: Global Offensive (Demo Viewer, 2023). After that, hit Play in this menu and you will be loaded into CS:GO.

You will see that it’s the same Main Menu that you are familiar with, and you can even check the Friends Menu.

It will show that your friends are playing CS:GO but they are actually playing CS2. If you try to invite or join them, nothing will work as it will say your client needs to update.

This is because the original CS:GO servers are down. You can even test this by going into Official Matchmaking and searching for a Competitive match.

When you do this, you will get the “Matchmaking Failed” error immediately telling you to update the game.

However, if you change Official Matchmaking to Practice with Bots, you will notice that you can play the maps you were trying to play in Official Matchmaking. This includes all the Casual, Competitive, Wingman, War Games, and Deathmatch Maps in their original state.

You can even go into the Training Course and play the original Training Course mode.

Interestingly, the Workshop for CS:GO is still operational. If you go into Workshop Maps, you will be able to load any that you have downloaded.

If you go into Steam and click on the Workshop option for Counter Strike 2, you will see that it loads up the Workshop Maps.

Some of them will say CS2 while others will say CS:GO. You will still be able to see Most Popular, Most Subscribed and Most Recent maps.

You can subscribe and download them. After downloading, it will appear in the Workshop Maps tab of your CS:GO game. You can play it from there.

However, the state of Workshop Maps is not clear at the moment. Valve could decide to scrap Workshop Maps for CS:GO and it would mean that you no longer have access to them. However, for the moment, they are playable and downloadable.

The last option in the dropdown menu is Community Server Browser. If you go into this browser, you will see a whole list of servers. However, you won’t be able to connect to them as they all show that the servers are all for CS2. This means you can’t join them through this browser.

Although there is still a way that you can join Community Servers. This is only possible if you know the IP of the community server you are trying to join.

Open up the Console in the game and type in the message: connect [IP of Community server]. Doing this will allow you to join the Server as long as it existed beforehand in CS:GO. If you’ve downloaded maps from any servers, you can also join them through this method.

That’s your answer to whether you can still play CS:GO. As you can see you can, but only somewhat. You don’t have access to the traditional Competitive and Casual online matchmaking. However, you can still play with bots, use Workshop Maps and join Community Servers indirectly.

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