Right now, you could sum up any Counter-Strike: Global Offensive fan with one gif: the one from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, where Charlie Kelly tries to prove how Pepe Silvia does not exist. Except in this case, Charlie Kelly is the community and Pepe Silvia is the Counter-Strike 2 release date.
Yesterday, Valve changed the banner on the CS:GO Twitter profile to what appears to be a new logo for the launch of the new and improved Source 2 version of the game, widely believed to be called Counter-Strike 2. The logo, which is basically the CS:GO one without the GO part, is on the tilt a bit and fans are obsessed with it – so much so that players have started whipping their protractors out.
And it turns out that the logo is tilted to 23 degrees. Does that number sound familiar to you? Well, if you’ve been part of the CS:GO Source 2 conspiracy club for a little while, you’ll know that March 23 has been tipped for the launch of the game.
Why? Well, this is where things get weird.
Valve has been pretty tight-lipped on the whole Source 2 update even though it’s clear the developers have been cooking up a storm behind the scene. The team has never once commented on the possibility of the release, but it has responded to several tweets about it and all but one have been gifs from the US version of The Office.
I know what you’re going to say here: ‘But Jess, The Office first aired on March 24.’ That’s true, but did you know CS:GO’s version, cs_office was launched on March 23? The same date that was used for the launch of both Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Half-Life: Alyx.
And what about the last Twitter banner? On March 18, the CS:GO Twitter account changed its banner to one that had five CT operators on it. The community took that to mean a countdown and guess what 18+5 equals, folks? You guessed it: 23.
Now, we’re not saying that the Counter-Strike 2 release date is confirmed for March 23, but our mathematical copium certainly is. Either way, with the original reports suggesting we’ll be getting our hands on the beta before the end of the month, it won’t be long before we can see what Valve has been cooking.