Counter-Strike 2 is now officially released for all players on Steam! A Steam client restart may be required for the update to be applied correctly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nSE38xjMLqE

For over two decades, Counter-Strike has offered an elite competitive experience, one shaped by millions of players from across the globe. And now the next chapter in the CS story is about to begin. This is Counter-Strike 2.

A free upgrade to CS:GO, Counter-Strike 2 marks the largest technical leap in Counter-Strike’s history. Built on the Source 2 engine, Counter-Strike 2 is modernized with realistic physically-based rendering, state of the art networking, and upgraded Community Workshop tools.

In addition to the classic objective-focused gameplay that Counter-Strike pioneered in 1999, Counter-Strike 2 features:

• All-new CS Ratings with the updated Premier mode
  
• Global and Regional leaderboards
  
• Upgraded and overhauled maps
  
• Game-changing dynamic smoke grenades
  
• Tick-rate-independent gameplay
  
• Redesigned visual effects and audio
  
• All items from CS:GO moving forward to CS2

https://store.steampowered.com/app/730/

Read more here: https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/games/546560/announcements/detail/3758762298552654078

Yesterday Valve published their another VR title, Destinations, which is powered by Source 2.

Destinations Workshop Tools lets you create, share, and explore both real and imaginary places in virtual reality. This is a beta release of a set of content creation tools that users can use to construct worlds and share them on the Destinations Workshop – then explore them with the included Destinations Viewer.

Visit the Destinations Steam store page to download the tools and viewer. Then read the developer wiki to learn how to get started making your own destinations.

Destinations is compatible with any HMD that is supported by OpenVR, including the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift.

Data miners and people without a VR set can launch the app executable with the -novr switch, as usual.

HL3/L4D3/RPG findings:
https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/4ngj11/findings_in_destinations_summary/
https://www.reddit.com/r/HalfLife/comments/4nbusm/hl3_strings_found_in_destinations/

As we wrote earlier, Vulkan support was to come to Dota 2 this week.

https://i.imgur.com/tPxyhkd.png

Here are the patch notes:

The beta version of Vulkan support for Dota 2 is now available via DLC. Vulkan is a high-efficiency cross-platform graphics API for modern GPUs. For more information on Vulkan visit http://www.khronos.org/vulkan/.



Technical notes:
* Please make sure to opt-in to the Steam Client Beta for the latest Steam Vulkan Overlay (fixes performance issue with Steam Overlay).
* Enable with the -vulkan launch option after downloading the Vulkan Beta DLC. Remove -dx9/-dx11/-gl (if present) from any previous launch options.

Minimum requirements:
- Windows 7/8/10 64-bit: NVIDIA 600-series+ (365.19+ driver), AMD 7700+ (Crimson 16.5.2.1+ driver)
- Linux 64-bit: NVIDIA 600-series+ (364.16+ driver), AMD GCN 1.2 (16.20.3 driver)
- 2GB of GPU memory required - may experience crashes with < 2GB of GPU memory.

* The first time you run with Vulkan you may experience short stutters while the engine caches shaders on disk. After playing through or watching a match, these stutters should go away.

* There is a known issue on Linux with NVIDIA GPUs where tearing can be observed even when vertical sync is enabled. NVIDIA is aware of the issue and it will be fixed in the future through a driver update.

* Please file any bugs with the Vulkan version at https://github.com/ValveSoftware/Dota-2-Vulkan/issues/

A Valve employee confirmed in their post on Reddit, that "sometime next week" Vulkan support will be enabled for the Dota 2 client.