Blogs
on 8 hours ago
In order to further contain CS:GO 's French marketplace, perhaps to avoid market manipulation through the use of X-Ray Scanners, Valve is making one additional change. Loot boxes can no longer be purchased from the Steam Community Market in France. All CS:GO players in the country will have to earn their own loot boxes. Though, naturally, Valve will still allow those players to sell their loot boxes to those in other countr
The era of CS:GO skin gambling may be coming to an end as Steam updated its Online Conduct policy to prevent users from engaging in this type of activity. More specifically, the latest update to this policy states that Steam users shall not engage in commercial activities such as running contests, buying or selling Steam accounts, posting advertisements, or gambling. This last element is the most crucial one for Counter-Strike players , as it explicitly states that the action of gambling skins is now frowned upon by St
Skin gambling has been a regular activity for CS:GO fans , allowing them to bet on their cosmetics in hopes of winning better ones. Various platforms offer these services, with players placing bets on professional matches or joining lotteries using their in-game cosmetics as currency. Valve previously launched legal action against gambling sites that demanded access to the Steam API, automatically loading the users’ inventory to ease the betting process. However, since all CS:GO skin gambling websites don’t use this Steam API, players could still bet on their cosmetics if they wanted
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
A new CS:GO patch details the removal of bots that would otherwise replace players who are disconnected or kicked out of "classic competitive and wingman modes." Whenever an entire team leaves any given match, they will now be replaced by a single bot that idles in the team's original spawn location. However, they still appear in Warmup arenas, as patch notes posted to the official Counter-Strike Blog outline a fix to bot navigation in this part of the g
There have been mixed responses to this change in the comments of a post by CS:GO 's Twitter account, and on the r/csgo subreddit. Many decry the change for giving teams that inadvertently lose members from disconnects or those that kick potentially "toxic" individuals a more substantial disadvantage. Others suggest players have abused the bot system by kicking out other users they deem to be less useful on the battlefield, but even then many feel there was likely a better solut
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
Even the most popular multiplayer games sometimes need to implement AI-controlled "bot" characters. These can play a number of roles, including filling out extra spots to get more game lobbies running, or giving beginning players easier targets in the case of PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds implementing bots on PC last year . Valve's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has used bots to replace players who are dropped from a team, but as of today that is no longer the c
As if that isn't frustrating enough, Valve has apparently "preloaded" the X-Ray Scanner with an item already. Meaning that players will have to purchase this item, regardless of whether they want it, in order to use the X-Ray Scanner on a loot box. The X-Ray Scanner may appear to be beneficial to players, but ultimately is just another effort at encouraging players to begin purchasing microtransactions . There's little reason to believe it's significantly beneficial over
Steam updated its guidelines for users to add more restrictions regarding online gambling, leaving the future of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin gambling uncertain a few months before the release of its highly anticipated sequel Counter-Strike 2 . These guidelines, gathered under the name "Steam Online Conduct," describes the activities Steam users cannot perform on Valve’s platform, such as posting illegal or inappropriate content, engaging in unlawful activities, or harassing other users. The update to this policy impacts Counter-Strike 2 tournaments|https://counterstrike2zone.com/: Global Offensive players, who are now unsure of the future of their skin gambling activit
Twitch continues its streak of cracking down on streamers who violate their community guidelines, this time dropping the hammer on one of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 's popular players. Unlike the platform's recent DMCA-inspired content culling, "aggression" earned this streamer his fourth temporary