With a game as stupidly popular and successful as Counter-Strike, the question 🌱is not 'Will there be a sequel?' but rather: 'When?'

Valve Software, the developer housed in a red building entirely comprised of $50 bills (it could happen), knows this too: "We will never abandon Counter-Strike," marketing man Dღoug Lombardi told Shack News, explaining why the online shooter hasn't received a majorꦦ update since the release of Counter-Strike Source.

"It's a little bit unfair to compare Counter-Strike, I think, to your classic game that's gonna have these ꧑sequels. It looks a little bit more like an MMO where it's constantly [being updated]."

But Lombardi did reveal that the developer is at least thinking about how they'⛎d approach a sequel:

"With Counter-Strike 2," he said, "there's a big question between, do we go start over from scratch and build this whole new game, do we do something that looks more like Team Fortress 2 that is rooted in the old game but has a ton of new stuff,⛦ or do we just sort of take everything that's new that we've released and put that out in a new box." We'd go 🐭for the middle one.

"I think we're leaning more towards the two more radical places than just sort of rolling up the new box and reskinning the bo🍬x and putting out all the new stuff."

The Valve team also recently confirmed (by accident) that a second Portal game is in the works (and Lombardi has since officially stated that "more Por𒅌tal is coming"), so combined with the Counter-Strike sequel and Half-Life 2: Episode Three, could we be looking at the early stages of🌞 what might be an Orange Box Two?

"I just don't think that [Counter-Strike 2] would be a good fit [with a second Orange Box]," piped in Valve overlord ♓Gabe Newell, noting that CS2 would be a stand-alone game to him.

"But if 🌟I ge💞t 15,000 emails from customers in response to this interview telling me 'Of course it should be in [the next Orange Box],' then of course we'll pay attention to that."

Here's hoping.

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Mar 3, 2008