Valve’s hidden chicken pet mechanics uncovered in CS2!
There was one part of the update that wasn’t mentioned: Chicken. The changelog only included one Chicken-related note—that they can now be hit by the Zeus x27, with updated hit reactions, and Chickens killed by the Zeus x27 now turn into a roast-chicken model. But a large number of Chicken-related updates weren’t mentioned at all. Is a pet system about to go live?
Since the update, Valve has been giving Chickens special attention, and players have been saying Valve is about to add pets. Now, roughly two and a half years later, Valve has finally served it up after a long wait. Let's take a look at the hidden Chicken-related update in the game—not long after the patch notes were finalized, a friend shared what he found regarding eggs. Sure enough, none of this was mentioned in the notes. It appears thateggs take up two slots in the Weekly Care Package, so claiming an egg means you cannot claim other rewards.
Chicken Egg: Not Tradable. And with multiple color variants of chicken eggs in the observable universe, what exactly is this egg for?
has now been seriously datamined. No content related to fried eggs, tea eggs, or steamed eggs was found—this egg clearly isn’t meant to be eaten. At the same time, some other new content was also discovered—
Egg model:
The egg models include a speckled egg and a default egg variants.
Meanwhile, a chicken egg model was found. The egg model is animated, likely as part of the click feedback for the egg claimed in the video.
At the same time, another egg model appears to have a hatching animation:
Hatching Animation 1:
Hatching Animation 2:
The animation only includes the eggshell portion, but you can still see collision reactions between the Chicken and the shell, including the part where the Chicken steps on and breaks the shell.
It also includes a Chicken model—a cute, fluffy little yellow chick.
Jailer Close-Up:
This Chicken chick has an inspect animation, along with multiple Chicken animations, including a hatching sequence. As for the full hatching animation, you can experience that for yourself in-game! Here are some of the other animations:
Inspect Chicken:
You can clearly see that this action involves holding it up with both hands.
Cute chick idle animation:
Various other animations:
Beyond the coop and eggs shown in the video above, there's also a Chicken feeder⟧ shaped like a chicken feed bucket:
This feeder has full and empty food states, along with a shaking animation that may simulate the feedback of a Chicken pecking at its food. Chickens are generally fed grain, so if you can name your Chicken, call this one Grainpeck.
The game also adds sound effects that sound like “getting a good pull from a case”evolution (evolution), making it look like CS is about to become a pet-raising game... This includes sound effects for Chicken, medium chickens, and large chickens.
There also appear to be multiple chicken feed models and textures:
Includes chick feed and adult chicken feed. SUNNYSIDE (the SUNNYSIDE brand).
This feed bag has its own model, but it doesn’t have matching animations.
This feed may have other ways to be obtained, or it could be added to the Weekly Care Package drops. Would one bag of feed take up a single inventory slot? It may also be used for sale.
There are also more textures for the big chickens—two new models have been added as well, along with multiple textures for the original Chicken. Across all three models, the textures add up to roughly 30-plus different chicken looks.
New textures for the original model (partial preview)
Can Valve add this skin?
Why don't you... come try that academy setup?
Second Chicken model (partial display):
Wow, this is just too beautiful—I’m going to melt if I get any closer! This breed should be a Polish bantam chicken.
The third Chicken model (partial display):
It looks like Valve might be the biggest ikun after all, but since none of this was mentioned in the patch notes, the Chicken-related content may not be fully implemented yet and could go live in full after a few more rounds of polish.
The look where the dream begins:
On the classic the 1.6 map Italy, there are two of these Chicken models. It may be that, even back then, Valve was already leaning more and more into using chickens as a mascot through Chicken-themed elements.