A former Valve employee spoke about the developers' serious work on CS

Former Valve employee Christopher Green, who worked for the company for 17 years, held an AMA session with fans of the company, where he answered questions about Counter-Strike 2. Green noted that the developers take the shooter seriously.

[Question: "Why doesn't Valve give Counter-Strike as much attention as it generates revenue?"] In my opinion, the CS development team is extremely dedicated, loves the game, and wants you all to be happy. I've never once felt like Valve didn't understand how big this responsibility is and how important it is. It's a shame that you can't see developer chats where the focus is solely on how the game is being received by users. [Question: "Have you worked on Counter-Strike? And is it getting a lot of attention at Valve, or is it just quietly existing?"] Every game has my code related to the engine and graphics. I remember well how long it took to work when we started implementing the HDR technology from Lost Coast into all games on the Source engine. In the later period it was mostly work on optimizations, particle operators, etc. The contrast between what some players perceive as disinterest in the franchise and my own perception is really interesting. In my opinion, the CS franchise was treated like the "really important thing" it should be, and the team worked on it with great enthusiasm.

During the AMA session, Green also answered a user's question about what HLX is. Previously, data miners said that they believe this is a disguised name for Half-Life 3 in the code of games on the Source engine. You can read the response from a former Valve employee at this link.