Counter-Strike 2 didn't launch next to CS:GO. On September 27, 2023 it took CS:GO's place in the same Steam listing, and CS:GO's official servers went offline. The old game didn't disappear entirely, though: Valve kept a frozen legacy build, ended support for it on January 1, 2024, and in March 2026 gave it a Steam page of its own again.
The dates
| Date | What happened |
|---|---|
| Sep 27, 2023 | CS2 replaces CS:GO on Steam; CS:GO's official servers go offline |
| Oct 9, 2023 | A legacy version of CS:GO appears under the Betas tab of CS2's Steam properties |
| Dec 1, 2023 | Last day to claim a Prime Status Upgrade refund for players who couldn't run CS2 |
| Jan 1, 2024 | Valve ends support for the legacy version |
| Mar 3, 2026 | CS:GO returns to Steam as its own unlisted app |
Why Valve kept a legacy build
CS2 left some players behind. Valve said it had made "the difficult decision to discontinue support for older hardware, including DirectX 9 and 32-bit operating systems", and that it would "no longer support macOS". VGC reported Valve's figure that these groups together made up less than one percent of active CS:GO players. CS2 runs only on 64-bit Windows and Linux.
For those players Valve offered two things. One was the legacy version. The other was a refund of the Prime Status Upgrade, with rules HLTV set out in October 2023:
- DirectX 9 and 32-bit Windows users qualified if they had bought Prime on Steam between the Limited Test announcement on March 22, 2023 and CS2's launch on September 27, 2023.
- macOS users qualified if most of their CS:GO playtime had been on a Mac and they had played on a Mac in that window, whenever they had bought Prime.
- CD keys, gifts and banned accounts were excluded, and claims closed on December 1, 2023.
What the legacy version can and can't do
Valve's description was short: the legacy version "is a frozen build of CS:GO. It has all of the features of CS:GO except for official matchmaking." No new updates, no Valve matchmaking servers, no Premier or Competitive queues. What's left is everything that doesn't need Valve's matchmaking: offline play against bots, Workshop maps, and community servers, which you join through the server browser.
The support cut-off came with a warning. After January 1, 2024, Valve said, "certain functionality that relies on compatibility with the Game Coordinator (e.g., access to inventory) may degrade and/or fail." The Game Coordinator is the Valve back end that handles things like matchmaking and your items, so Valve made no promise that your skins would keep working in the old client.
March 2026: CS:GO gets its own Steam page again
On March 3, 2026, without an announcement, CS:GO reappeared on Steam as a separate app that you can install and launch on its own. PC Gamer reported the next day that the page was unlisted, so it didn't appear in Steam searches, and that there was still no matchmaking. Players could still find community servers through the server browser, and PC Gamer counted more than 61,000 people playing at the time of writing, enough for a place in Steam's top 20.
Valve played it down. "It's just a quality of life improvement and easier way to launch it," a Valve representative told PC Gamer. "The legacy client already existed but now you don't have to switch depots in CS2 anymore." GosuGamers added that Valve had told Dust2.us it would not license CS:GO esports tournaments, even though it has licensed events for Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source.
What this means for your items
Your items didn't stay behind. Valve's promise at launch was that you could "bring your entire CS:GO inventory" into CS2, and that is where your skins, cases and stickers live now. Trading, the Steam Community Market, opening cases and applying stickers all happen in CS2. Coverage of the standalone CS:GO app in March 2026 described bots, training, Workshop maps and community servers, not inventory features, and Valve's 2023 warning about inventory access still stands.
So if you are judging an older skin, the CS:GO legacy build isn't the place to look at it. CS2 renders items with Source 2 lighting and new models, as our article on what changed for skins in CS2 explains, and that is how buyers will see it.
The older Counter-Strikes are still around too
CS:GO joins a family of old versions that never left Steam. Counter-Strike 1.6, Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source each kept their own store pages, and Source even received a major update in February 2025 that moved it to 64-bit, according to the Counter-Strike Wiki. Our history of the Counter-Strike series covers how each one began. For the update that sent CS:GO into retirement, see our CS2 launch article, and for the six months of testing before it, the CS2 Limited Test.
Sources
- CS:GO remains available on Steam in frozen build — HLTV.org
- Valve has dropped Counter-Strike 2 support for Mac and older PCs — VGC
- CS:GO support officially ends for 'legacy' version — GGRecon
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is back: CS:GO has its own Steam page again — PC Gamer
- Valve puts Counter-Strike Global Offensive back on Steam, won't grant licenses for esports tourneys — GosuGamers
- Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — Counter-Strike Wiki
- Counter-Strike 2 — counter-strike.net
- Counter-Strike: Source — Counter-Strike Wiki
