Valve to force everyone to play in 64 ticks’ servers

The hype regarding CS2 is growing, as it seems only a matter of days before Valve officially announces the game’s worldwide release. However, many things are still not yet known in detail, such as, for example, the server tick rates.

Likewise, in the last few hours, some reports indicate that Valve might force everyone to play on 64-tick servers. These reports mention that Valve introduced a “codification” regarding the 64 ticks servers in its update last September 13.

If these rumors are true, even servers from external platforms such as FACEIT and ESEA could not use a 128-tick rate on their servers. However, Valve could reverse these settings, but, at the moment, it could not.

Reports indicate that Valve would force everyone to play on 64-tick servers

According to Pavel Djundik, founder of SteamDB and a really popular dataminer on the Internet, Valve introduced codings for everyone to play on 64-tick servers.

Seems like CS2 hardcoded the tickrate in the client binary, so even if server binary is patched (they got rid of GetTickInterval function which made this easy), it shouldn’t matter.

Valve should be improving stuff that is subpar, rather than bruteforcing it with 128 tick.

— Pavel Djundik (@thexpaw) September 14, 2023

On the other hand, other changes in the CS2 update were removing the “cl_interp” and “cl_interp ratio” commands, which players used to reduce lag spike. However, it seems that it was all a “placebo.”

Undoubtedly, the debate regarding 64 and 128-tick servers has been ongoing for many years. However, most players came to the same conclusion: migrate to FACEIT or ESEA and did so for much of the 11 years that CS:GO has been with us.

Valve’s official CS:GO servers are 64 ticks, while external platforms use 128 tick servers, which, according to insiders and professional players, make the “game much better.”

On the other hand, many members of the Counter-Strike community feel that Valve is not moving forward by dropping the official 64-tick servers. Also, FACEIT created its first servers several days ago, which are apparently 128 tick, but the platform does not confirm this. However, since then, several players and game legends began to mention that FACEIT’s servers “registered more shots” than Valve’s official CS2 servers. Similarly, mention was also made that movements were not “clunky” on the FACEIT servers.

Will CS2 kill @FACEIT ? We try the new severs, I’ll let you know my feelings in a bit

-> ttv/kennyS

— kennyS (@kennyS_) September 7, 2023

Valve has a reason why forcing players to play in 64 ticks

Indeed, many players are not happy that Valve keeps 64 ticks on their CS2 servers. However, there are some reasons why Valve might force all players to play at this rate since the game is in the beta phase still, and that is the only way players can report bugs to the developers.

Also, the fact that FACEIT created these servers and that some players have commented that they are better than Valve’s keeps the community a bit divided. This is undoubtedly bad for both the CS scene and Valve, as the most important thing right now is for professional players to help fix the game’s problems.

Finally, if FACEIT or any external platforms cannot use 128-tick servers, players will likely be 100% dedicated to Premier Mode. As a result, it would be in Valve’s best interest.

Header: Valve