CS2 Age Rating & Restrictions: Legal Side Explained [2024]

The growing popularity of video games involves players from all over the world. The worldwide community contains gamers of different ages. The shooters, strategies, RPG, and other genres are beloved by millions of fans. It makes the age restrictions usually don’t fall under the attention of the parents, and the players themselves.

CS2 is the most popular shooter of the current century. The community, which started its growth when the CS 1.6 appeared, gathered more than 20 million players. Therefore, the age limitations of the game became a serious issue, which indirectly defined the availability to play it before reaching the age of 18. What are the objective CS2 age requirements, and what factors do influence its age rating?

The Concept of CS2

CS2 is a famous shooter, which can be downloaded for free in Steam (only conditional age clarification before the purchase appears). The game process is based on the confrontation between 2 organizations. They are the following:

• Terrorists (T) – the team aimed at planting the bomb at the exact spots or holding hostages.
• Counter-terrorists (CT) – the team aimed to prevent the bomb’s planting or rescuing hostages.

The players are divided into these teams, which are switched up in the middle of the game. When the team has an outstripped number of the winning rounds, the game ends.

The violence aspect, which may influence minimum age to play CS2, may be the following:

• Presence of terrorism (although it is entirely opposed by presense of the CT team).
• Presence of firearms, which is shown in the application.
• Presence of violence – each team needs to make kills to win the round.

As we see, the listed aspects contain only a few features, which may influence CS2 age rating. Compared to the other games, the content is presented in a mild form.

What Is The Minimum Age To Play CS2?

The presence of violence and terrorism play a key role in making CS2 suitable only for adults. The growing popularity of video game’s influence on children’s behavior forces world organizations to set up age restrictions for certain games. For sure, each organization sets up its rating for CS2.

ESRB Rating For CS2

The rating system was developed for evaluating the age rating of American and Canadian video games. The algorithm is considered significant due to the detailed analysis of each game. It depends on the availability of the acceptable age material in the game. The rating has 6 categories, starting from EC (Early childhood) and ending with AO (Adults only 18+). The CS2 ESRB rating is M (Mature), which is determined by the presence of the following content:

• Blood scenes.
• Severe violence.

Such a category means that CS2 is suitable for children no younger than 17. The restrictions are noted in the game’s box and Steam description.

ACB Rating For CS2

ACB is a confirmed governmental establishment in Australia, which provides age evaluations for movies and video games. It has 6 categories, which are more condescending than the ESRB. CS2 falls under the M15+ classification, which means that adults can purchase the game. The children younger than 15 can play only with adult’s permission. The main factors of placing CS2 to such a category are the following:

• Availability of solid and realistic violence.
• Performing intense scenes.

The ACB organization was offered to place the game into the most restricted category – R 18+ (Restricted), because of gambling elements. The item cases, famous in-game functionality, were considered a type of in-game casino, strictly forbidden under 18 years in Australia. However, the issue was rejected.

PEGI Rating For CS2

The European gaming organization defines the minimum age to play CS2 as 18. The category PEGI 18 was chosen for the game due to the following aspects:

• Presence of specific violence types.
• Presence of specific violence, which may cause disgust.
• Presence of in-game purchases.

Such a rating caused different misunderstandings among the several players, who protested about such a distribution.

RARS Rating For CS2

The Russian classification outlines the following aspects to place the game into 18+ categories:

• Content, which may encourage children to commit threatening actions to health, or even suicide.
• Information, which justifies crimes, cruelty and illegal actions and depicting the consequences of bloody violence, which does not exclude sexual violence.

The restrictions proposed by RARS, allow adults only to purchase the game, and the children can play it only after parent’s permission.

USK Rating For CS2

The German organization outlines the aspects of violence and crime in CS2, which gives the game an 18+ category. Only adults are allowed to purchase the game, and it is completely forbidden for the children.

Gambling In CS2

The essential aspect is the availability of in-game purchases, which are usually considered a casino element. The item cases, which are seasonally added to the game, contain common, rare, and extremely rare items. The chance of their drop decreases depending on the rarity of the item. Such a game element is an optional function, and no one forces players to buy the cases and open them for real money. Therefore, most claims about such an aspect are usually rejected.

It is usually said that opening cases in CS2 becomes boring and conventional. Online CS2 roulettes appeared to make the process more exciting and bring attraction to the community. Skin.Club is a website with many custom cases with less price than in the Steam market. A great worldwide community and regularly changing events make the item getting process exciting and entertaining.

CS2 Age Restrictions: Concluding Thoughts

All in all, despite the opinions of worldwide organizations, CS2 is still the most popular shooter with a community of different ages. Several aspects of violence and terrorism may set up several age restrictions, but the game is fully available for children at the age of 12. The parent’s permission may perfectly supplement the decision to start playing the legendary game.