Theo Quinton

In what appears to be bizarre effort to avoid oversight for its loot boxes, the developers of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have added a controversial new feature. The new feature is exclusive to France, where lawmakers are currently evaluating new regulations regarding loot boxes and gambling in video games. The feature, in an extremely limited fashion, allows players to look inside of a loot box prior to spending money to unlock it. And Valve clearly believes it will help CS:GO avoid additional scrut New players to the Competitive playlist will first have to win 10 games before they get ranked. This will place them in one of the ranks listed above, and many will most likely skip the first couple of low ra Here's how the full feature technically works. In CS:GO , players are able to either earn loot boxes through gameplay or buy them from other players. However, these loot boxes can only be opened by paying for a key. The new feature is called the X-Ray Scanner and allows players to place one loot box into it to reveal the item inside. However, and here's the trick, once an item has been scanned by the X-Ray Scanner, players will have "claim" the item buy purchasing a key to unlock it before being able to look inside another loot A number of other changes were made through the January 7, 2021 patch. For example, SWAT sleeves have been downsized on "all existing models," the Ancient map has been optimized, and Steam China users can now receive CS:GO Prime Account Status if they have a government identity verification. There are also a number of bug fixes and minor adjustments one might expect from an online game update, as seen in a recent Monster Hunter World: Iceborne pat While Valve and others have tried to take action against cheaters , using software to detect and ban them (Valve Anti-Cheat in the case of CS:GO ), they can still run rampant in many games. Gamers who recognize ScriptKid's name may remember him from a previous video where he trolled PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds (PUBG) cheaters in a similar fashion. Causing them to be ejected from their cars once they were traveling over 85 km/h, to shoot their teammates when trying to revive them, and to be prevented from throwing cooked grena Another contentious change in the latest patch is the removal of the ability to highlight weapons during competitive matches using "pings." Twitter user unhappy_an suggests this alleviates a concern in which players could use discarded weapons to track when opponents are in a given locale, but at the same time it removes functionality for online matchmaking teams that want to tell allies where they can pick up suppl Everyone loves to win, especially when playing against others, but cheating ruins the game for all players . Cheaters end up with no challenge, players using fair-means lose out and get frustrated, and ultimately developers and publishers lose, as fed up gamers stop playing games they would otherwise still be enjoying. It is a shame that some people still want to cheat, but with people like ScriptKid on the side of fair players, perhaps eventually they can be stop It's currently unclear why Valve moved forward with these changes in France, in particular. So far France has not enacted any new regulations to account for loot boxes in video games, though French courts did recently rule that Steam has to allow users to resell their digital games . In 2018, the French online gambling regulatory body even assessed that loot boxes were not gambling under the country's current regulation. Perhaps Valve is using France as a testing bed or perhaps the decision is intended to shift discourse within the country or Europe. Either way, Valve certainly appears to be taking steps to protect the profits it receives from loot boxes amid the growing international controve Not only did ScriptKid fool thousands of Counter-Strike 2 tournaments|https://counterstrike2zone.Com/ cheaters into downloading and becoming victim to his script, their most embarrassing moments have been made available to watch. By including a script that sent the replay footage of every cheater mishap directly to him, ScriptKid created a magnificent video, including the funniest trolling mome Indeed, the glorious cherry on top of the cake, is that should Valve's VAC system detect ScriptKid's fake cheat mod, it will help bring the trolled cheaters to their notice, and towards the just punishment of a ban. Viewers of the latest video have suggested Call of Duty: Warzone , Team Fortress 2 , and Dota 2 , as the next games that need help to tackle the cheat Players who would like to participate in the Competitive playlist in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will first have to play unranked matches of Arms Race, Casual, Deathmatch, or Demolition until reaching level two. Then, they will be placed in one of several ranks to climb the competitive ladder. This guide will help players identify how many ranks there are in total and how the ranking system works in CS: