Counter-Strike 2 probably shouldn't be able to dine out on CS:GO's positive reviews

At the time of writing, Counter-Strike 2 has 7.5 million reviews on Steam, 88% of which are positive. That's pretty good going for a game that released less than 24 hours ago.

Except, of course, that the vast majority of those reviews are for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a game that is no longer playable. If you filter the reviews to just yesterday and today, you'll find that there have been 3450 of them, just 59% of which are positive, which would give Counter-Strike 2 a rating of "Mixed".

That "mixed" rating would spell trouble for most newly launched multiplayer games, but Counter-Strike 2's overall and recent review averages remain "very positive" thanks to that long history of positive reviews about CS:GO.

Given the games are so similar, then perhaps CS2 supplanting the Steam page of its predecessor is reasonable. I'm unconvinced, however.

I think it's a question of degree. You may boot up Counter-Strike 2 this week and feel that nothing has changed, or that some things have changed but everything you valued is still present. Or, as Edwin wrote about earlier today, you may find that it no longer runs for you at all because CS2 doesn't have Mac support and CS:GO did. You may find the new minimum specs exclude your computer, or that it's simply less comfortable to play because left-handed weapons have been removed. You may find that your favourite mode - the one that prompted you to spend all that money opening in-game crates - has disappeared overnight.

Valve themselves obviously feel as if the changes between the two games are significant. They have, after all, called this Counter-Strike 2 and not CS:GO 1.6. In that context, it just seems bizarre to me that when I go to Counter-Strike 2's Steam page, the default filter shows me 2 million "very positive" reviews, roughly 2 million of which are for a different game that nobody can play anymore.

User reviews exist to give players information about a game before they devote time or money to it. Where that game or its reviews may have changed significantly, Valve normally attempt to make that context clear. Any review written while a game is in Early Access, for example, will be for all time labelled as an "Early Access review".

If Steam can recognise that games may change significantly between Early Access and 1.0, then it should recognise that they can change significantly between CS:GO and a sequel. Perhaps all the pre-September 27th reviews could have "CS:GO Review" written at the top.

Or perhaps the more sensible option, whether CS:GO was disappearing or not, was that Counter-Strike 2 should have been given its own fresh Steam product page. That way Counter-Strike 2 wouldn't suddenly be referred to as our "8th best FPS ever" on the RPS Curator page, despite us never having played it (we'll update that), and wouldn't be riding high on stolen valor.