Counter-Strike 2

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Squelching the Noise

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We take feedback about communication abuse seriously, and in the past we’ve shipped settings that let customers control their exposure to other players’ avatars, names, and voice/text chat. (You can find these in Settings->Game->Communication and on the scoreboard). The settings are useful, but they have the downside of squelching communication indiscriminately.

So we’ve been working on a new system that will work more precisely. When the new system is fully deployed, players will receive a warning if they receive significantly more abuse reports than other players.

If they ignore that feedback and continue to receive abuse reports, they’ll receive a penalty: they will be muted by all other players by default. This ‘default mute’ state will remain until the player earns enough XP to remove the penalty, but other players can choose to manually unmute the user (as they would any other muted player).

Because the new system is driven by reports, it lets players establish their own standards for communication and ensure that their fellow players receive anonymous feedback when they’re out of line.

We’ve already started tracking players’ reports with the new system, and you can help us by getting into the habit of reporting abusive players for ‘Abusive Communications or Profile’ when you come across them. Note that reports are weighted higher for players that play more and/or report less frequently, so accounts that generate no XP and/or spam reports will have little to no impact.

As always, you can send feedback and/or concerns to [email protected]

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Field Trip

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Leave the gear behind, we are going on a windy walk here. This week’s missions reward those with a sense of adventure and an appreciation for the finer things.

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Yesterday, we released a new music kit featuring Scarlxrd. With heavy trap beats and unique delivery, ‘King, Scar’ brings a new and exciting musical subgenre.

If you haven’t already, grab a kit, gxxd luck and have fun!

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The First Major of 2020

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Today we’re excited to announce that the first CS:GO Major Championship of 2020 will take place in Rio de Janeiro! Hosted by ESL at Jeunesse Arena, the event will be CS:GO’s first Major in Brazil.

Watch 24 of the best teams in the world battle through weeks of intense competition to earn their place in Major history. Below are the dates for the Challengers, Legends, and Champions Stage:

Challengers Stage: May 11-14
Legends Stage: May 16-19
Champions Stage: May 21-24

For more information, visit https://www.esl-one.com/csgo/rio/

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New Missions – Secret Agent Man

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Six new missions unlock in week 2 of Operation Shattered Web.

This week’s collection of missions, Secret Agent Man, unlocks today! Grab your MP5-SD and quietly make your mark on Nuke. Earn more stars in a variety of game modes to advance your Shattered Web Operation Coin and reap the rewards!

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Halo Sticker Capsule now available

As a cross-promotion with 343 Industries, today we’re adding the Halo Sticker Capsule, available for purchase in-game.

As an added bonus, any user who purchases and plays The Master Chief Collection for more than 5 hours on Steam will receive an exclusive Master Chief Collection Music Kit in CS:GO. The Master Chief Collection releases on Steam December 3rd.

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Operation Shattered Web



Bring your favorite character into battle with all-new equippable agents! Earn rewards featuring the new agents, all-new weapon collections, stickers, graffiti, and more through a new battle pass format. See all of the rewards and more info here!

Agents, Weapons, and More


Operation Shattered Web features CS:GO’s first ‘agents,’ characters that can be equipped on the T or CT side. In addition to their unique look, Master Agents have special voice lines and animations–you’ll get one Master Agent when you earn your final reward.

Along the way, you’ll earn several Operation Shattered Web Weapon Cases, along with weapons from three brand new weapons collections featuring designs from community artists. You’ll also earn all-new graffiti and community-designed stickers!

Missions Accomplished


Each week, you’ll get access to new missions in various CS:GO game modes, including cooperative Guardian missions and an all-new Strike mission. Missions are available to all players, but you’ll need an Operation Pass to redeem your rewards.

You may recall that we recently shipped a few changes to bots in Deathmatch. Those bots will be ready for action in the Guardian and Strike missions, so watch out!

New Maps


We’re also shipping a few new maps today in various game modes. Defy gravity in the new Flying Scoutsman map Lunacy, and get ready to rumble in the community-made Danger Zone map Jungle. Looking for something more competitive? Try Studio, available as a Scrimmage or in the Casual Sigma map group!

Performance is its own Reward


Did you earn the most MVPs? The most enemies flashed? The most… something? Find out with Accolades, special call-outs at the end-of-match screen.

Parting Shot


We’re making adjustments to a few rifles in CS:GO. The SG553’s price has returned to $3000 to bring its price more in line with its value, and the FAMAS and Galil have both gotten $200 price cuts and buffs to their full-auto spraying accuracy.

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Keeping Things Transparent

A quick update on our plans for 2020 Majors:

Some of the feedback we’ve received in response to our blog post “Keeping Things Competitive” from teams and tournament organizers is that the business of leagues (specifically, shared ownership of leagues between TOs and teams) does not create new conflicts of interest, because similar arrangements have existed in the past and those conflicts of interest are not significant.

While we can point to clear cases where relationships between teams and TOs have generated distrust in the community, we agree that our near-term priority should be collecting more data and requiring more transparency so that conflicts of interest can be properly evaluated.

Therefore, for 2020, teams and players registering for the Majors will be required to publicly disclose their business relationships with other participants and/or the tournament organizer, so that public conversations can be had about the value that leagues and other entanglements offer versus the risk that they pose. Failure to disclose any business with the TO or other participants will likely result in disqualification.

We do not intend to add any other requirements for participation in (or hosting of) 2020 Major Championships.

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Key Change

Starting today, CS:GO container keys purchased in-game can no longer leave the purchasing account. That is, they cannot be sold on the Steam Community Market or traded. Pre-existing CS:GO container keys are unaffected–those keys can still be sold on the Steam Community Market and traded.

Why make this change? In the past, most key trades we observed were between legitimate customers. However, worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains. At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced. As a result we have decided that newly purchased keys will not be tradeable or marketable.

For the vast majority of CS:GO users who buy keys to open containers, nothing changes; keys can still be purchased to open containers in their inventory. They simply can no longer be traded or transacted on the Steam Community Market.

Unfortunately this change will impact some legitimate users, but combating fraud is something we continue to prioritize across Steam and our products.

If you have feedback or concerns about this change feel free to email us at CSGOTeamFeedback [at] valvesoftware.com with the subject “Key Restriction”.

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Cache and Release

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Cache has been updated by FMPONE and Volcano and is playable on official servers in Casual, Deathmatch, and Scrimmage.

CS20 Weapon Case and Sticker Capsule


Today we are releasing the CS20 Case to celebrate the twentieth anniversary of Counter-Strike. This weapon case contains a variety of themed weapon finishes from the Steam Community Workshop and features the Classic Knife as the rare special item, a classic of the Counter-Strike series. Also available today is the CS20 Sticker Capsule, featuring 20 community-designed stickers.



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Keeping Things Competitive

We’re back from the incredible StarLadder Berlin Major. While the teams were busy with record-breaking 60-round matches, the community was busy as well: tournament items for this major will pay out over $11 million for participating teams and players!

During the Major, we followed conversations in the community about leagues, media rights, and the future of CS:GO events. And while we typically don’t weigh in on these conversations, there are a few issues we want to clarify to make sure everyone is on the same page.

Leagues


We make it free to get a license to operate a CSGO tournament because we want to get out of the way of third parties creating value for our customers. Often that value comes from experimentation–tournament operators experiment with presentation, technology, formats, locations, etc. We support experiments that are scoped large enough to identify new and interesting opportunities, but not so large that if they fail it would be hard for the ecosystem to recover. With that in mind, CS:GO leagues present two concerns for us:

Exclusivity


Recently there have been steps toward a broad form of exclusivity where teams who compete in a particular event are restricted from attending another operator’s events. This form of team exclusivity is an experiment that could cause long-term damage. In addition to preventing other operators from competing, exclusivity prevents other events from keeping the CSGO ecosystem functioning if an individual event fails. At this time we are not interested in providing licenses for events that restrict participating teams from attending other events.

Shared Ownership


A few years ago, we started talking to tournament operators, teams, and players about the importance of avoiding conflicts of interest in CS:GO Majors. We consider a conflict of interest to be any case where a tournament, team, or player has a financial relationship with any other participating team or its players. This includes multi-team ownership, leagues with shared ownership by multiple teams, or essentially any financial reason to prefer that one team win over another. In open events, like the Majors, teams with these business arrangements may have (real or percieved) financial interest in the success of teams that they are competing with. In order to participate in Majors, we require that players, teams, and tournament operators confirm that they have no existing conflicts of interest, or if they do, disclose them and work to resolve them. This requirement isn’t new, but we felt it was worth reiterating given the conversations we’re hearing. If you are interested, the exact terms we require are below.

Media Rights


Another conversation we saw during the Major was about the ability for members of the community to broadcast the Major. Throughout the year, tournament operators use their events to build relationships with sponsors and media partners. When it’s time for the Majors, we think it’s important that they don’t disrupt those existing relationships. For this reason, the Major tournament operator has always been the only party that has had a license to broadcast the Major.

However, we do expect our Major partners to be as inclusive as possible. Major tournament operators are expected to work with streamers in order to provide viewers with access to valuable alternative content and underserved languages, whether through official streams or otherwise. Anyone that wants to offer a unique perspective and co-stream the Major should reach out to the Major tournament operator ahead of time in order to ensure a good experience for everyone involved.

More Detail on Conflict of Interest


Here are the terms we’ve required that players and teams accept when they register for a Major:

Teams and players should not have any financial interest in the success of any team that they are competing against. To participate in this Tournament, players and teams are required to affirm that they have no business entanglement (including, but not limited to, shared management, shared ownership of entities, licensing, and loans) with any other participating team or its players. If you have an agreement or business arrangement that you think may be of concern, then please reach out to the CS:GO development team for further discussion.

“I am not currently aware of any conflict of interest that I might have with another participating team or any player on another participating team. If I currently have a conflict of interest, or become aware of one over the course of the event, I will immediately provide detail to the CS:GO development team explaining the nature of my relationship with the other player or players, and a plan for resolving the issue in the future. I understand that failure to report my conflict of interest may result in my disqualification from the event and/or forfeiture of proceeds.”


In addition to players, the tournament operator accepts the following clause in the Major tournament agreement:

Licensee and Tournament event staff may not have any business entanglement (including, but not limited to, shared management, shared ownership of entities, licensing, and loans) with any participating team or players. If Licensee has any business entanglement with any player or teams then Licensee will disclose them in writing (including a description of the nature of the conflict) to Valve as of the Effective Date and at any point thereafter during the Term when such entanglement may arise. Within its sole discretion, Valve reserves the right to a) require that Licensee address and remove the business entanglement or b) terminate the Agreement without cost or penalty.

We think that avoiding conflict of interest is an important part of ensuring fair and honest competition, and so we do not have any plans to change these requirements for participation in a Major.

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StarLadder Berlin Major Champions

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Congratulations to Astralis, who won a record-breaking third straight Major Championship and their fourth overall.

AVANGAR’s path to the Grand Final met the brick wall of Astralis, who took hold of the series from the first few rounds and never let go.

Thank you to everyone who watched the Major, and to StarLadder, the teams, and the players for an incredible event.

Finally, there’s still a chance to support your favorite teams–player and team items are up to 75% off!

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General Release Notes for 7/6/2018

[ PANORAMA ]
Users can now opt in to the Panorama UI on Windows and cross-play with their friends by adding -panorama to the CS:GO launch options.
[ HUD ]
– HUD Money panel now has a background like the health and ammo and is also controllable with cl_hud_background_alpha.
– Fixed the HUD chat lines not lining up with each other in certain resolutions/scales.
– Updated the look of crosshair style 0 and 1 to more closely match the scaleform version.
– Panorama crosshair style 0 and 1 now no longer scale when changing resolution.
– Added buttons to the scoreboard to allow users to toggle caster features.
– Custom team logos now work again using png extension and can be placed in the new team image location or the old (flash) location.
– Fixed ADR not filtering out team damage.
– Fixed Overwatch suspect not being highlighted in scoreboard.
[ WATCH MENU ]
-Added download state indicators to match lister tiles
-Enabled watching a demo from a specific round
[ MAPS ]
Mirage:
-Adjusted player collision on bench wall at bombsite B.
Overpass:
-Fixed several bomb-stuck spots.
Cache:
– Updated the BSP embedded radar map image to the new version.
[ MISC ]
– Increased brightness and adjusted the vignetting on the map loading screen image.