Counter-Strike 2 update speeds up Retakes defuses and lets you ping chickens for tricks
A Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) update makes Retakes defuses finish instantly in some cases, shortens freeze time and adds chicken tricks, plus map scripting changes.
Valve’s latest Counter-Strike 2 update, posted on Steam on 4 November 2026 (US Pacific time), speeds up Retakes mode and adds a small treat for chicken fans. Mapmakers also get a batch of scripting changes.
Gameplay
- Defusing in Retakes now finishes instantly when there’s enough time left in the round and no active utility remains that could stop the defuse.
- Freeze time and the round restart delay are both shorter in Retakes.
- Pinging your pet chicken during freeze time asks it to perform a trick.
- Pet chicken names no longer show when the customized item text game option is set to hidden.
Map scripting
Most of the scripting changes shuffle existing tools into a new top-level export called Entities. The old versions still work in their original places, but they’re now deprecated.
- New additions: Entities.Spawn, Instance.OnBotControl, CSPlayerController.IsControllingBot, CSPlayerController.GetControlledBotPawn and CSPlayerPawn.Reset.
- Instance.Precache now accepts entities to precache.
- Instance.ConnectOutput has moved to Entities and now takes a config object. Instance.DisconnectOutput has moved there too.
- Renamed methods: EntFireAtName is now Entities.FireInput, FindEntitiesByName is now Entities.FindByName, FindEntitiesByClass is now Entities.FindByClass, and EntFireAtTarget is now Entity.FireInput.
- Instance.FindEntityByName and FindEntityByClass are deprecated.
- Calling a method on a removed Entity now reports that the Entity is invalid.
- ConnectOutput logs a warning when the target has no output with the given name.
