Valve quietly added pet chickens to Counter-Strike 2. Eggs obtained as weekly rewards turn into chicks after a week and can be fed to evolve into chickens of different rarities.
You might think the most exciting thing in Counter-Strike 2 today is the new "Rush Hour" update. This update brings a fast-paced mode and a silent magazine swap feature. But you'd be wrong, because chicken pets have overshadowed Rush Hour.
Chickens aren't new to CS2; they've been wandering around some maps for a long time, and you can even walk up to them and get them to follow you. But this is different. Now you can get an egg from your weekly reward. This egg is non-tradable and consumes both of your weekly reward allowances.
After waiting in your inventory for a week, the egg should turn into a chick. But I know what you're thinking: "All you get is a pet chick you can inspect? That doesn't feel very CS2." You're right, but if you take care of your chick and feed it chicken feed, it can evolve into a chicken with various appearances at different rarity levels—now that's very CS2.
There's a normal brown chicken, a white beardless Silkie, and a buff Polish chicken. But that's not all, because these differently appearing chickens are said to have 35 different rarities. There's bright blue, purple-yellow, blue gradient, nuclear red, toxic green, and many more.
You can inspect these magnificent appearances just like inspecting a weapon, and your little chick and grown chicken can learn tricks. They can run in circles around you (cute), flap their little wings and hover a bit (amazing), and do a little karate kick (pure cinema).
After hatching, you can name your chick, take it to the photo booth, and have it sit on your shoulder during the loading screen. When it grows up, you'll be able to carry it into lobbies, and when it's fully grown, it will eventually leave you, but its photo will remain on your profile.
It's a bit strange that chickens weren't mentioned in the patch notes at all, but it's also on brand for Valve to add something like pets instead of trying to fix CS2's anti-cheat.
