Two things can tell you what’s happening next in videogames: market trends, and datamining. The two are coming together one more time to suggest that Valve are taking a punt at the titanic battle royale genre with a CS:GO survival mode that has been hinted at in files over the course of the last year of updates. This comes from a new Valve News Network video that you can watch above.

For the current state of the game, here are the best CS:GO console commands.

For those unfamiliar with the channel, Tyler McVicker aka VNN has reliably covered leaks and information regarding Valve’s games for years. He put together prototype versions of plans for Half-Life 3, and is generally on the money with how to read the various unused files that most of his information comes from.

As for his conclusions here, they seem on the money. Survival is mentioned all over the files, and once soundscapes are added for a map, that means it’s progressing beyond the test phase and is something they’re committed to releasing. Of course, this is the company that forgot to keep up with an episodic series of one of the most popular gaming franchises ever, but it’s as good as anything. Here’s the full soundscapes video he uploaded separately:

It also makes a significant amount of sense as a move for Valve. PUBG is the most popular game on Steam, by multiple magnitudes. CS:GO already has the pseudo-realistic shooting and movement model that helped make the genre so huge. Epic proved with Fortnite that jury rigging it on top of other systems can be massively successful.

As VG247 put it, Valve could just be filling the game full of useless files, and it would hardly be the first time that datamining of their games didn’t lead anywhere. Alternatively, there is a survival mode coming, but it’s less related to PUBG besides surface level similarities like the island map.

We likely won’t know more, outside further datamining, until the mode is ready to play – Valve usually keep this stuff quiet until they can say it’s available for players either live or on a test branch. It would likely be the center of a new operation – Hydra began on May 23, 2017, almost a full year after the end of the last one, so it could be quiet the wait.