Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

has some of the most famous, popular, and beautifully handcrafted maps of any multiplayer game. But there’s still only a finite number available, so it’s cool that someone has built a procedurally generated level with “tens of millions” of possible layouts.

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Toxicity in games is no fun, and in this year of our lord 2020, there seems to be a growing trend of using artificial intelligence to find and deal with toxic players. I don’t just mean in text chat either; the companies Modulate and FaceIt have both created AI that can supposedly detect toxicity in voice chat from the way that someone says something.

Part of me that feels like this is a good idea. Having a way of quickly and easily getting rid of them is great. However, I’ve heard one too many stories about AI learning to be racist, so I do wonder if it’s the best sort of tech to put in video games.

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Gaben Claus has gifted the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community with an early Christmas present. Operation Broken Fang is now live, and brings with it new maps, features, and cosmetics.

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Look, competitive Counter-Strike is nice and all, but on the 20th anniversary of v1.0 I do find myself consumed with dreams of a wholly different CS skill: surfing. It’s the freestyle skating to proper CS’s baseball, using a movement glitch to skid, glide, and soar through maps filled with abstract shapes. It is stylish as all hell. And people race surfing! Or you could go freestyle and hit cool tricks to wow judges! Maybe you could even do synchronised routines! Or, like with the X-Games, you could think it seems too much effort and just watch YouTube videos and coo approvingly. So let’s do that, for now.

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It was 20 years ago today that version 1.0 of Counter-Strike launched, boasting iconic maps like Dust and Italy. But what about the maps that didn’t make it out of beta? CS had over twenty which bounced around betas but were cut by the full release, including all the maps representing one entire mode. I revisited the cut beta maps today and was surprised by quite how many I remembered, a lot of weird fond memories mixed in with a few moments of “Oh yeah obviously I see why this was cut”. Come, let’s revisit them.

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On the 9th of November, 2000, Valve released version 1.0 of Counter-Strike. The tactical shooter had started as a Half-Life mod in beta the year before, originally created by Minh “Gooseman” Le and Jess Cliffe, and became the star of the scene. It’s weird to say now, but a twitchy teamplay FPS with a grounded paramilitary setting and realistic style really did stand out. V1.0 wasn’t the end for CS though, as Valve kept expanding and updating it for years, and used it as the testbed for new tech including Steam. It set the model for ‘live service’ games as we now know them.

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The war between cheaters and anti-cheat technology might be endless, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have fun with it. I’m delighted to learn about the work of “ScriptKid”, a fella who releases fake cheats that actually sabotage games for would-be cheaters. Wrong’uns go to Google looking for free cheats, find the fake cheat site he’s set up, download and run his fake cheats, then… find they’re forced to jump off buildings to their death in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or their movement keys screw up, or their gun stops working, or worse. He uploads videos of would-be cheaters getting pranked, and it’s quite cathartic to watch.

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The coronavirus pandemic has shut down yet another gaming event. This time it’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive‘s Rio Major, and Valve say they won’t be scheduling any more of the tournaments until LAN events are safe to hold around the world again.

Valve have also addressed coaches being able to cheat in competitive games for years using a bug, detailing the action they’ll be taking against these cheaty cheaters.

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Coaches eh? They’re meant to be a great help for improving your game, but it seems some sneaky Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams have taken that to mean peeking where they’re not allowed during high-stakes competitive games. Now, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) is raking through years of demos to find these meddlesome cameramen, with the suggestion that they might go easy on folks who own up to their crimes.

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Valve’s strict new anti-cheat system was powerless to protect Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players from a very simple trick that let perpetrators see everyone through walls. Until last week, players could make a single file tweak that gave them a huge, cheatily cheat advantage. It now appears to have been fixed.

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