After Valve officially announced the release of Counter-Strike 2, it became clear that a big rebranding arrive with this update. In addition to the name change, there will be many changes in the game, but if Valve wants to bring the game to a new level of popularity, it is worth considering one more change.

Is CS:GO not popular enough?

It seems strange that CS:GO has problems with popularity. This year, the game is breaking online records, and the community is making noise so loudly that this noise is echoed in the communities of other games. However, this is a superficial view.

Let's look at the Riot Games games everyone knows about because even people who have never been interested in games have seen the League of Legends banner somewhere or heard about VALORANT. It is worth clarifying that now we are talking about the whole world, not only Europe and South America, where Counter-Strike is abnormally popular.

Speaking of VALORANT and League of Legends, these games have one significant advantage: they are family-friendly projects. In VALORANT, there is not even a bomb. Although the local "Spike" works similarly, it is not called a "bomb." Also, this game has no mentioned sides of the conflict. In VALORANT, various heroes fight against each other, making the game more friendly. In CS:GO, the situation is entirely different.

Related: The number of simultaneous players in CS:GO exceeded 1,400,000

CS:GO repels advertisers and sponsors

During the entire existence of CS:GO, the game doesn't appear so often in traditional media, does not receive advertising, and is not so widespread on some platforms. Suppose the lack of advertising can be blamed on Valve, which is not adequately engaged in marketing. In that case, the almost complete absence of the game on Instagram and Facebook clearly cannot be connected with it. After all, the game has more than 24 million monthly players, and some are making content.

English-language analyst Jacob Pimp Vineche explained this situation. He wanted to advertise his video about grenades on Instagram, but the platform refused him this, saying that his content "promotes weapons, violence, and the sale of ammunition."

It is not surprising that Counter-Strike is highly unpopular on Instagram and Facebook. I asked to promote one of my smoke guides, and it was immediately rejected for the following reason: "Promoting weapons, violence, and the sale of ammunition against blah blah blah."

Counter-Strike is toxic in terms of advertising, and some platforms stop its distribution at the earliest stage. If you look closely at the game, this is not surprising.

Counter-Strike 2 needs America

One word stands between the game and millions of parents, advertisers, open platforms, and regions. Terrorists. In a game where you shoot, kill, plant bombs, and take hostages, the player can be a terrorist.

Of course, this is already part of the game's culture, but this is a repulsive factor for people unfamiliar with Counter-Strike. It is much more fun and safer to play Valorant with blasters than to shoot police forces on the side of terrorists.

This partly led to the fact that as soon as a worthy competitor with strong marketing appeared, CS:GO lost its position in one of the world's wealthiest regions, the USA. Today, the players and teams from there are more of a subject for memes than for the championship because the older people don't play better over the years, and all the young people went into the Riot shooter.

Is one word worth losing generations of players?

Related: CS:GO has a huge problem with team support

Attack and defense

It is enough to look at Rainbow Six: Siege to understand how to correct the situation. This game is less popular than CS:GO, but at the same time, it has large sponsors at esports events, despite a smaller audience. At the same time, R6S is a realistic shooter in a setting similar to CS:GO. The tasks in these games are also identical - one side attacks the object, and the other defends it.

But there is one important nuance - the words "terrorists" and "special forces" are not used in Rainbow Six. In the game, abstract attack and defense are opposed to each other. Thus the brand becomes much safer. No hints of terrorist acts. CS:GO can easily apply the same model - just call terrorists "attack" and special forces - "defense." The project will become a much less risky asset with more sponsors.

At the same time, you may not even copy the Siege model. It is possible to name the sides CT and T and not decipher them. With a straightforward solution, the attractiveness of the game for sponsors and advertisers will increase many times, and with this, it will make the game more popular among ordinary users.