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A paved sidewalk outside a yellow building covered in art with a red bike next to it on Italy, a map in CS2.
Screenshot by Dot Esports
Category:
Counter-Strike

How to fix Connecting to CS2 Network Error

There are steps that can help you play CS:GO again.
Leonardo Biazzi
  and 
Mateusz Miter
|

Published: Aug 9, 2022 10:05 am

Sometimes when players boot CS2 they’ll spot an error message that says “Connecting to CS2 Network” on top of the game’s menu.

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This error prevents users from playing on the official CS2 servers such as matchmaking and Premier games, casual, and so on. But it doesn’t necessarily mean servers are down. There are a few steps of ensuring the servers are down, and if they are, of fixing them.

How to check if CS2 servers are down?

First and foremost, players should check if the CS2 servers are down. There are a few methods to do that, but one of the most reliable ways is accessing the website Steamstat.us, which shows the status of all Steam services like Dota 2, and Team Fortress 2.

Screenshot taken of Mirage's A bombsite in CS2.
With a lot of updates lately, players may often struggle with server connection issues. Screenshot by Dot Esports

To check if servers are down, simply enter the page and browse your regional ones on the right side of the website.

If it’s a server outage, there’s nothing you can do but wait for the developers to put it back up again. There are, however, a few fixes you can try to get rid of the “Connecting to CS2 Network” in case the servers are working, and you’re still getting the bug.

How to fix Connecting to CS2 Network Error

The first step to take in case your account can’t connect to the CS2 servers is to check if your computer has a stable connection to the internet. Even if it does, you can still restart your network just in case. If that doesn’t work, you could also restart your PC, because sometimes it fixes the issue.

If these steps don’t work, repair the game files by right-clicking Counter-Strike 2 on Steam, accessing the Properties, moving to Local Files, and clicking on “Verify integrity of game files”.

CS2's settings menu on Steam.
Screenshot by Dot Esports

Steam will check all of CS2 files on your computer and re-download the ones that are broken. The files may corrupt after an unsuccessful update attempt, which is a common issue after the game is patched. With Valve trying to fix numerous problems lately, these updates are quite regular.

All these steps are generally enough to fix the CS2 app on your computer, in case you’re facing the “Connecting to CS2 Network” error message.

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Author
Image of Leonardo Biazzi
Leonardo Biazzi
Staff writer and CS:GO lead. Leonardo has been passionate about games since he was a kid and graduated in Journalism in 2018. Before Leonardo joined Dot Esports in 2019, he worked for Brazilian outlet Globo Esporte. Leonardo also worked for HLTV.org between 2020 and 2021 as a senior writer, until he returned to Dot Esports and became part of the staff team.
twitter Link to leonardobiazzi.contently.com
Author
Image of Mateusz Miter
Mateusz Miter
Staff Writer
Freelance Writer at Dot Esports. Mateusz previously worked for numerous outlets and gaming-adjacent companies, including ESL. League of Legends or CS:GO? He loves them both. In fact, he wonders which game he loves more every day. He wanted to go pro years ago, but somewhere along the way decided journalism was the more sensible option—and he was right.
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