A new Counter-Strike game is reportedly in development and could arrive later this month

More than a decade after the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Valve is reportedly preparing to announce a new version of its landmark tactical shooter. Additionally, a beta release may come as early as later this month. According to esports journalist (via ), Valve is working on a sequel to CS: go for some time, and that game is “almost ready to go.” He said the studio recently hosted a secret playtest of the first-person shooter involving a group of professional gamers who flew to Seattle. According to Lewis, Valve tentatively plans to begin beta testing the game with the wider Counter-Strike community on April 1 at the latest. “The big priority is to get it and then polish it, fix any bugs and bring it up to the level that people expect from CS,” one of Lewis’ sources told him.

As for improvements, the new Counter-Strike is reported to have improved graphical fidelity thanks to a behind-the-scenes transfer of Source 2, the latest version of Valve’s in-house game engine. Additionally, Lewis says the game will support 128-tick servers, a feature that will bring CS into line with and reduce latency. Valve is also said to be significantly improving the matchmaking experience, which should make the community less dependent on third-party services like FACEIT. Valve did not immediately respond to Engadget’s request for comment.

Rumors suggesting a new Counter-Strike game have been around for years, but there are some reasons to give more weight to this latest report. For starters, Lewis has a solid track record. In 2015, he wrote a report confirming the rumors that one of the leading professional CS: go the teams at that time had . There is also corroborating evidence to support his claims. At the beginning of the month, some CS: go fans found evidence that NVIDIA’s GPU drivers have included references to “csgo2.exe” and “cs2.exe” since February.