Your Counter Strike 2 world is the thing you cannot get back if it is lost, so back it up before you change settings, install mods or update.
Before you start: stop the server so the backup holds complete files. See How to start, stop, restart and force-stop your server.
Where the world is stored
Counter-Strike 2 has no world or save file: matches are played on maps and nothing about a match is kept between restarts. The game itself is in the game folder inside Files, and plugins and their settings are under game/csgo/addons.
Make a backup
- Open your server in the panel and click Backups in the left menu.
- Click Start backup with Files selected. The backup copies the whole server folder, so the world is included.
- To keep a copy outside PlayNHost, open the ... menu of the backup and choose Download.
The server folder also holds the game's own files, which can be large, so check the size on the Backups page. If it does not fit your backup space, ask support what to leave out. Do not guess an ignore pattern, because a wrong one can leave your world out of the backup. See How to create, download and restore backups for scheduling, locking and limits.
What to make sure is included
There is no world to back up. If you use plugins, create a Files backup and, under Ignored files, exclude the game files so that only game/csgo/addons/counterstrikesharp is saved (it holds the plugins, their settings and the admins file). Do not back up the whole server folder: the game files are about 68 GB.
Restore a backup
A restore replaces the current files with the backup, and anything changed since is lost. Take a fresh backup of the current state first if you may want it back.
Choose Restore to server from the backup's ... menu, confirm, and start the server when it finishes.
