Counter-Strike 2, Valve’s chief shooter (sorry, TF2), has finally solved the mystery of all those chickens appearing in Source 2’s source code by unveiling hatchable and collectible eggs that eventually turn into your very own special chicken pet. Yes, really.
Last night, Valve introduced a new patch to Counter-Strike 2, addressing various gameplay elements with a particular focus on sound and adding in some exciting new stuff, including a new “Rush” game mode and, well, literal collectible chickens.
The chickens, though, are nowhere to be found in official announcements. Last night, while routinely playing the game, players started getting their weekly drops, which usually include a chest, a terminal, a spray, and a weapon skin, or some combination of these, but now started featuring strange chicken eggs as well.
The eggs take a while to hatch, and depending on the type you receive, you could get one of many different chickens that’d appear next to your operator as a cosmetic addition to your character’s look.
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There seem to be about 35 different chicken skins in the game, but neither they nor the eggs appear to be tradeable. That only makes sense—Valve’s been putting in the effort to curb tradeable weapon skins for a while now and has almost completely done away with the mechanic in Dota 2, for example. While chests and marketable items remain in CS2 at the moment, having the chickens be a non-marketable and non-tradeable item is on track with its recent behavior.
Still, it’s a very strange addition, indeed, if Valve doesn’t plan to turn this into another market. Everything is a little unofficial at the moment, so who knows what’ll happen down the line. Valve also introduced the ability to apply stickers to your C4, which could further indicate the impending commodification of the terrorist bomb.
All things considered, I don’t see chickens remaining permanently untradeable, but no one can ever predict Valve’s next move.
