Opportunities for misdirection maneuvers are less common in multiplayer shooters, so I'm compelled to highlight this absurdly creative flashbang feint I spotted on the ESEA YouTube channel from last weekend's ESEA S13 LAN in Dallas.

The setup: two teams whittle each other down to a one-on-one scenario around bomb site A on de_dust2. Watch how Swag (Team Dynamic) handles KennyS (VERYGAMES) after the bomb plant.

Reflex Gamers has made a brilliant addition to its 24/7 cs_office server for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive—the map now features the "Sourcemod Entertainment System" (SMES), a playable console which runs "Super Mareo Bruhs" on a TV in the projector room.

I just jumped into the server to check it out (video below), and it works as advertised, with support for two players and animated controller buttons. Someone even has to put the Super Mareo Bruhs cartridge into the SMES and turn it on to play. PC gaming: even the games in our games are high-fidelity.

You can play Super Mareo Bruhs yourself on Reflex's cs_office server, which lives at 74.201.57.168. The plugin's coder, Pray and Spray, deserves a barrage of internet high-fives for this feat.

Valve has sent out a patch for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that focuses on tweaking Hostage Rescue rules for stronger balance and to entice players away from the long-favored Bomb Defusal. Most notably, CTs have now adopted the tactical doctrine of draping hostages across their shoulders like a squishy scarf, and only a single rescue is needed to secure a win for the good guys.

You'll need to interact with a hostage for a lengthy four seconds to get him to hop on for a ride, and a new "rescue kit" shortens pickup time to a single second by presumably wowing hostages with attractively padded and comfortable-looking shoulder guards to rest on. Taking a note of influence from community-made maps such as cs_motel, hostage spawns are now randomized per match.

Valve is also continuing to stock GO's maps with updated versions of classic Counter-Strike levels, with cs_militia being the latest addition. It's structured similarly to cs_assault, where Ts benefit from an entrenched interior location to bunker in while CTs attempt rescue through multiple points of entry.

Defusing bombs got a small but significant change as well: turning too far away from a bomb while defusing it will cancel the process, a jump in risk and exposure for CTs trying for the win while Ts yet linger to guard the bomb. They could sure use one of those hostage-capes for extra protection.

Oh, and the rumored Support Pass for a community map rotation on official servers isn't happening. Valve even pokes fun at earlier reports of the pass with a new data string, "CSGO_Ticket_CommunitySeasonOneSpring2013_Leak," and its single-word description: "lol." Oh, Valve. Don't ever change.

See the rest of the patch notes over on Steam.

The CS community took out their knives and eagerly sprinted forward to the hundreds of user-made maps filling Global Offensive's Workshop since last month. We've got a nice stack of them running on our own server, and Valve is evidently looking to copy that setup on its own servers. Data-divers of reddit have found mention of a "Support Pass" in the next patch for players to purchase and access a pool of community maps soon to join the official server rotation.

A list of new data strings found in the patch mentions a "Community Support Pass Season One" to "grant access to Season One's featured community maps on official servers." The proceeds are distributed evenly to map contributors in what's likely an incentive to encourage an increasingly large selection of maps to feature.

The data doesn't mention a price, but Valve has a similar system in place with Team Fortress 2's co-op Mann vs. Machine mode, where players access multi-map sessions by purchasing $0.99 tickets. Assuming GO's passes carry a similar cost, it should result in a relatively simple way to jump into high-quality custom battles for little effort. The patch is expected to hit this week, so we'll have a clearer understanding of Valve's plans soon enough.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has a lot of custom maps. Seriously, browse its Steam Workshop page and see for yourself. We've talked about some of our favorites (all of which appear in our CS:GO sessions on our server), but a classic map layout we've yet to see a worthy update for is de_rats' bomb-defusal play in an oversized kitchen. DJ PC820 and TastySlopsicle's de_dolls_csgo is perhaps the best spiritual iteration we've spotted yet.

Instead of a kitchen, de_dolls_csgo takes us into a heavily pink bedroom which I assume is the property of a little girl, but the power of pink is genderless. Just like in rats, the jumbo furniture provides multiple nooks and alcoves for plinking across the map, including a doll house with furniture and a duct passage for moving around without exposing yourself to the AWPer's paradise of the main bedroom floor.

The map supports both classic and deathmatch play as well as bots for offline practice. You can easily download it by hitting the green "subscribe" button on its Workshop page.

Valve boss Gabe Newell stepped up to the stage during last week's BAFTA awards to receive the prestigious Academy Fellowship for his contributions to gaming. Presumably momentarily distracted by accepting a trophy modeled after a smirking face, a bewhiskered Newell fielded some interview questions over the normally airtight subject of Valve's business performance that hinted at the monumental scale of the studio's prosperity.

Newell chalked up Valve's successes largely to user-generated content on open platforms such as Steam Workshop before sharing some jaw-dropping numbers. "There's sort of an insatiable demand for gaming right now," Newell said. "I think our business has grown by about 50 percent on the back of opportunities created by having these open platforms.

"And just so people understand how big this sort of scale is getting, we were generating 3.5 terabits per second during the last Dota 2 update," he added. "That's about 2 percent of all the mobile- and land-based Internet activity."

Wait, what? We're not exactly sure what Newell meant when he dropped that bombshell of data info, apart from maybe claiming responsibility for all those times my connection speeds chugged while browsing these past few months. Still, it seems entirely plausible—Dota 2 has a lot of players, and the MOBA recently took the crown for the highest concurrent user amount of any Steam game ever. If any Steam game can feasibly take a bite out of the entire Internet, Dota 2 holds the best chance.

There will be Nevgevs.

Beginning tonight, we're hosting daily Counter-Strike: GO events on our server. Because why the hell not?

Our weeks-old, St. Louis-based CS:GO server has hosted lively Steam events about twice a week. We run custom maps exclusively because the community has somehow produced 1,000 of them for CS:GO since adding Steam Workshop support last month. I earmarked my early favorites in February, but new favorites have already emerged, like the cs_sauna remake.

How to join, in four extremely simple steps

Join the PC Gamer Steam Group to be notified of events
Subscribe to our CS:GO Steam Workshop map collection (this will auto-download and auto-update the maps we run on our server through Steam—MAXIMUM CONVENIENCE!)
Join the server ("PC Gamer | The Psychedelic Den of Map Experimentation," IP: 8.6.76.59:27015) around 7 PM PST / 10 PM EST
Have fun; be the kind of person you'd like to play games with

Thanks to GameServers for being a darn good server provider. If there's a config setting you'd like changed or a map you'd like to see in the rotation, just let me know or leave a comment on the Steam Workshop collection. Messages sent to evan@pcgamer.com stir my spinal community antennae implant.

And yes, we know CS:GO isn't the only game in the universe. But we've got a good thing going there, and I'd rather do a slow roll-out of community funtimes than expand things too quickly. Look for more games and events to pop up throughout the year.

Join a would-be city council featuring Omri, Logan, T.J, and Chief Justice Evan as we take our frustrations with SimCity's servers to municipal court. Is there a fun game under all the disconnects and network errors? Plus, we're finally allowed to talk about the Arma 3 alpha! Which essentially means, the rest of us interrogate Evan about the Arma 3 alpha!

Zone your ears for gaming news and discussion, because this is PC Gamer Podcast 347 - We Built This City on DRM

Have a question, comment, complaint, or observation? Send an MP3 to pcgamerpodcast@gmail.com.

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@logandecker (Logan Decker)
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@AsaTJ (T.J. Hafer, Substitute Belsaas for this episode)
@omripettite (Omri Petitte)
@belsaas (Erik Belsaas, podcast producer)

Here's the good news: Tactical Intervention, the free-to-play FPS from Counter-Strike co-creator Minh Le, is launching on March 28th. It will be preceded by an open beta starting March 14th, and a closed beta kicking off this coming Monday. The bad news is that, until they find a European publisher, the game will only be launching in the US. Booooooo. If only there was a way to pretend to be from another country on the internet - but alas, no such thing exists. Rappel beneath the break for further game details (the word 'rappel' was a devastatingly subtle clue).

Tactical Intervention's counter-terrorist-on-terrorist action obviously resembles Counter-Strike, but with features that might seem more at home in Rainbow Six: rappelling, riot shields, and the ability to shoot out of moving cars. Actually, that last one isn't familiar at all, but it's pretty darn cool nonetheless. Here's a video showing all of those things in action:

(Thanks to Eurogamer.)