Chloe Desmoineaux isn t your usual Counter-Strike player. I ll cut to the chase: because she uses lipstick to play the game. As in make-up.

She calls it Lipstrike, and it uses a clever mix of basic electronics, key remapping and gun-based violence. I like it a lot.

Using a kit from Makey Makey, Desmoineaux hooked up the control board and some alligator clips to her lipstick. The mouse is used, of course: left click to move forward, right for aim-down-sights, scroll wheel to switch weapons.

But when she applies the lipstick, the connection in the Makey Makey circuit board is completed, which is linked via USB to input as a button being pressed... and the bullets start flying.

Desmoineaux explained her thinking in an email to Motherboard, pointing out it s not exactly a serious thing it s just interesting and funny:

Counter-Strike is one of those games that's mainly attributed to a male audience. Lipstick for girls, war games for boys. Fuck that! I can mix it up... If it visually works and the resulting effect is comical, maybe it s because we all use shortcuts and stereotypes embedded in our heads. It's in this spirit that I got the idea for Lipstrike.

You can catch up on Desmoineaux s performances over on her Twitch channel, and she ll be broadcasting new sessions over there until June.

It's an interesting balance this weekend, as Blizzard's biggest esports ramp up for some high-level competition while Valve's largest games both have qualifiers for huge tournaments in May. Hearthstone and Starcraft II have international tournaments held in Europe in the form of the second Truesilver Championship and the Gold Series International. Dota 2 and CS:GO are hosting qualifiers for Epicenter Moscow and DreamHack Austin, respectively. Now matter the competitive level, there's going to be some great pro gaming this weekend. 

Hearthstone: Insomnia Truesilver Championship

This is the second Truesilver Championship, and will be a large tournament made up almost entirely of EU players—including big names like SuperJJ, Thijs, Rdu, Lifecoach and lots more. The tournament begins with a large Swiss group stage, with will narrow the field down to four 16 player double elimination groups, and finally a single elimination playoff bracket with the top eight players. Games begin at 7 am PT (14:00 GMT) today and continue through Sunday, and you can find the stream here.

StarCraft II: Gold Series International 2016 finals

The Gold Series International came to a head earlier this week, and the bracket has been raging on ever since. But that all ends tomorrow, as the only thing left are the semis and the grand finals. PtitDrogo faces off against Snute on one side of the bracket, while Harstem takes on PuCK in the other. All of this takes place on Saturday, starting at 6 am PT (13:00 GMT) and you can watch the stream here. 

Dota 2: Epicenter Moscow qualifiers

The actual Epicenter tournament doesn't happen until May, but the regional qualifiers are beginning to wrap up in the meantime, with all of the teams set in stone by the end of next weekend. Things kick off with the NA qualifiers today at 6 pm PT (01:00 GMT on Saturday), and then the EU qualifiers start tomorrow at 10 am PT (17:00 GMT). There are two official English streams, the main channel here and a secondary channel here.

CS:GO: DreamHack Austin 2016 Qualifier

Similar to Dota 2, there's a qualifier for a much larger tournament taking place this weekend. DreamHack Austin doesn't take place until May, but there's a large open qualifier followed by a smaller closed one happening this weekend. The open qualifier will be best-of-one single elimination matches between 512 teams, and starts on Saturday at 10 am PT (17:00 GMT). The top eight teams will then move on to the closed qualifier the next day at the same time, where they will face eight invited teams including Cloud 9, Tempo Storm, and NRG eSports. The top two teams will qualify for the DreamHack Austin. You can watch right here.  

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

It's been a dramatic week. The arrival of this year's Spring Cleaning update has been roundly overshadowed by the professional scene's most recent rosterpocalypse. If you were trying to figure out the optimal conditions for dramageddon ahead of the Manila Major, you could do worse than: Arteezy and Universe out of EG; Arteezy and Universe to Secret; w33haa and Misery teamless with days to go.

EG and Secret have been close to the centre of the western scene's drama and politicking for the last two years, and this week's news ensures that they'll stay that way through this year's International at least. As with any situation like this one, it can be hard to find the line between truth and narrative. What we have is certainly a concerted effort by Secret to build the squad they believe has the best chance of winning The International. It's tempting to additionally frame this as a nefarious plot by Puppey to dismantle a key opponent at a crucial juncture, but that's dramatising the facts.

These decisions don't get made overnight, after all, and nobody has been kidnapped. There are players, captains and managers who believe that upsets like this are necessary in order to safeguard their futures, and so upsets like this happen. Dota 2 is a high-stakes game, and tough decisions get made when there are millions on the line.

As David 'LD' Gorman pointed out on Twitter, the Major system was supposed to make the scene more stable. It clearly hasn't. I'm not sure that it's made the scene less stable, however—the impact of these roster lock periods seems to be to cram what would have otherwise been months of roster drift into a few dramatic days. The changes are more shocking thanks to a system that gives drama a deadline, but I'm not convinced that the system itself is responsible for those changes. The western Dota 2 scene was relatively stable until The International 2014, and then became incredibly unstable in its aftermath—a full year before the Major system was introduced. The aftershocks of that period are still being felt: after all, many of the same teams and players are involved.

It's not the same all over. OG have an air of that old-school Dota stability about them, and in the immediate aftermath of the Frankfurt Major n0tail explicitly credited their victory to the strength of the bond between all five players. If you're a spectator looking for a power-of-friendship narrative in modern Dota, you can find it there. You could also find it in Alliance, who have reformed the old guard after a few years of experimenting with abruptly dropping people.

The point isn't that these teams are doing it 'right' where Secret are doing it 'wrong': it's that there are multiple philosophies about how to build and manage a championship-winning team in modern Dota. Is this a bad thing? I'm not so sure. It's certainly the seed for a lot of great contests in the year to come. If Secret win this year's International, then the grand experiment will have worked—and you'll have, in Puppey and Universe, the world's first two-time champions. If they lose (particularly if they underperform like they did last year) then the apparent ruthlessness of this week's reshuffle will have laid the foundation for a tale of hubris and tragedy. It's a story to tell either way.

I wonder if, in some way, a lot of this drama stems from unreconciled disappointment with the death of 'classic' Dota 2 after TI4. There'll always be people who see Puppey as part of that original Na'Vi dynamic and who struggle to accept a new scene where he's heading up a machine built to win Internationals. There's been a loss of innocence, a shift from heart to brain. That's what happens when you put $18m on the table.

Short of a massive and unimaginable change, I don't think those days are coming back. Dota 2 isn't going to move to $1m prize pools and salaried season play. It's not going to become League of Legends, no matter how many range indicators Valve adds to the game. Dota 2 is now a game where stability exists alongside serious volatility, and where both of these approaches deliver results with enough frequency to ensure that neither of them goes away.

There are certainly improvements to be made. Even if I don't think the Major system has forced roster changes that wouldn't otherwise have happened, it has played a role in making those changes more painful for the players involved. If some of the best players are left stranded by a last-minute reshuffle prior to a hard deadline, then the entire scene suffers: including the lower-tier teams who should be benefiting from mobility among the top talent. In effect the opposite has happened—it seems more or less certain now that these sudden changes to Secret and EG have caused a power vacuum that has ripped Digital Chaos apart while w33ha and Misery remain teamless. These are issues of player welfare that require serious practical consideration.

Even so, I've spent much of this year being struck by the health of the international Dota 2 scene and this week's upsets haven't changed that. This is still a scene that allows fresh talent to transition from pubs and win championships. It's still a scene with meaningful regional diversity, and unless the rise of MVP presages total Korean dominance of the game, which it probably doesn't, then they are a perfect example of how dynamic Dota 2 can be from year to year.

The standard of play has never been higher, the stakes have never been higher, and the scene has retained these qualities regardless. That is a good reason to remain, or become, a fan. But a consequence of volatility is change, and change makes it hard to be a fan of just one specific thing. The more of the big picture you take in, however, the better everything looks.

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Last week we looked at how to defend on Dust2. This time we'll talk about why Dust2 is an excellent map for split pushes, how to take control over the map and how to deal with different financial situations.

Dust2 is a map that can be played in so many different ways. Mid doors, tunnels, long and catwalk are all choke points that separate you from the counter-terrorists. That means you have time to set up your pushes and execute pre-planned strategies if you want. It also means that you can split up and try to pick off your opponents one by one if you have good aimers on your team.

First of all, full out rushes without a plan aren't going to win you games. They might work from time to time, but for the most part it's better to go for map control to make it harder for the CTs to get in position for a retake attempt.

The B-split

One of the most effective ways to cut off defending players from the rest of their team is to smoke CT-spawn and then push B from both mid and tunnels with flashbangs.

I like to try to "force" certain rotations so that my team and I can be ready for whatever comes our way. What I've found particularly effective is to take control over the pit area on long before the B-split. Make the CTs back off a bit so that they won't have enough time to push through T-spawn or top of mid. Now you can be fairly certain that any rotating players will go through either CT-spawn or short.

Leave one player on long until the rest of your team is ready to execute the split. At that point your long player can back off to top of mid and either kill players rotating or call out how many have crossed mid doors or entered lower tunnels.

For the split itself I prefer to have one player in tunnels and three players going mid. As soon as the spawn smoke has bloomed and the three musketeers have control over mid, the player in tunnels can start to throw flashbangs and make life miserable (and short) for the player on B-site.

Taking control over long and catwalk

You don't want to peek long without a flashbang. Ever. A teammate can throw a flashbang over long doors so that you can go for the duel right after it pops. If you get the best spawn towards long I'd recommend that you go for it. Just make sure you have a friend ready to trade kills if you miss your shot.

Should you decide to go A after you've taken control over long it's crucial that you smoke off CT spawn to make it safer for you and your team to enter the site.

The most obvious problem when you want to take control over catwalk is the player in mid. You need to do something to deny them their much needed target practice. I like to put up a smoke screen on top of xbox. Even if you don't go catwalk after the smoke, the other team will still have to keep an eye open. The mid player will tell their team that there could be terrorists there.

If you decide to attack catwalk you should always ask a teammate to throw a flashbang for you. From lower tunnels is one way to do it.

When you attack from short A you want to give the defending players as many angles as possible to worry about. The best way in my mind is to have one player drop down to CT spawn. In order to do that you have to use another smoke. Note that the guys on long don't need to waste a smoke to cross over to site if you use this smoke instead:

Keep it simple

As you gradually get better at CS:GO it's common to overcomplicate things. When it comes to anti-eco rounds on Dust2 I've tried all sorts of things over the years with various level of success. Then I heard analyst Janko 'yNK' Paunovic talk about the subject and he suggested (I'm paraphrasing) that you should all just go long and deny the CTs those close-range duels where their CZ75s can turn into a real problem. I totally agree. There's no reason to make it more difficult than it has to be.

Eco rounds

Same thing here: don't overcomplicate things. When you go for an eco round, you want to plant the bomb and get that mad cash. I like to invest in a smoke grenade and a couple of flashes and go for the B-split I mentioned earlier, except I wouldn't have a player over on long. You need all your firepower to take the site. Getting pushed by tec-9s from three angles at the same time is a scary thing. Don't hesitate, just go for it.

I hope you found this guide helpful. Keep playing the game, try new ideas and have as much fun as possible and you'll improve.

Find all of our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map guides here:

• Inferno Counter-Terrorist guide
• Inferno Terrorist guide
• Cache Counter-Terrorist guide
• Cache Terrorist guide
• Overpass Counter-Terrorist guide
• Overpass Terrorist guide
• Cobblestone Counter-Terrorist guide
• Cobblestone Terrorist guide
• Train Counter-Terrorist guide
• Train Terrorist guide
• Mirage Counter-Terrorist guide
• Mirage Terrorist guide
• Dust2 Counter-Terrorist guide

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Last week I reported that the waters of paid modding were cloudy as ever: the debut game mode for Dota 2's $1 Custom Game Pass was found to use others' assets without permission. That's in spite of Valve's assurance to our Chris Thursten that "the Dota team's curation of the process addresses this, requiring a custom game to be free of copyrighted materials to be considered for a pass."

Having adopted a less than conciliatory tone at first, over the weekend Roshpit Champions creator ChalkyBrush apologised and removed the offending content.

"I made a mistake in responding as if I knew what I was talking about without having an actual understanding of how it works," ChalkyBrush wrote on Reddit. "The truth is you are right, the workshop art belongs to the artists. If this custom game is offering a Game Pass, it is not fair to the hours of time put into drawing the amazing images that you see in game.

"So the following actions are being taken:

1. I am removing all unacceptable item icons from the game. I will push an update in a few hours. Once it is live all items that have icons from the workshop will only have a generic image. We will slowly recover item images by curating our own content. This is the only fair way to do it.
2. I want to apologize to all the artists who I did not consult in using their amazing works. They spend hours pouring their hearts into this creative content and it is unfair to showcase them within Roshpit Champions with no credit to them."

The update is now live. ChalkyBrush has also asked artists interested in the project to get in touch and see if a deal can be reached. It's a much cleaner, more honourable end to the fiasco than we saw in the first round of paid modding.

Valve has yet to comment publicly, but the feeling is those copyright checks will need to be beefed up if the Custom Game Pass is to survive.

This week, things ramp back up for Dota 2 with Pit League Season 4, Hearthstone's Winter Championship crosses the ocean, the LCS marches onward like an unstoppable army, and Heroes of the Storm sees its biggest tournament since the Spring Championship. There's a whole bunch of great tournaments happening this weekend, and here's how you can watch them all.

Hearthstone: European Winter Championship

North America had its time in the limelight last week, so this weekend Europe takes its turn. As with the other regions, the European Winter Championship is the first of three qualifying tournaments where the winner walks away with a ticket to this year's World Championship and the largest portion of a $100,000 prize pool. Play begins at 14:00 CET (6am PST) each day, starting today and going through Sunday, and you can find the stream here.

Heroes of the Storm: Enter the Storm #2 Playoffs

A double elimination tournament between eight teams fighting over at $10,000 prize pool, Enter the Storm #2 concludes this weekend after group stages narrowed the field last week. Some of the best teams in North America—including Cloud9, Tempo Storm, Team Naventic, and Gust or Bust (previously King of Blades)—face-off for the first time since the NA Spring Championship last month. The bracket kicks off today at 1pm PST (21:00 CET) and then 11am PST (19:00 CET) on both Saturday and Sunday. You can watch the stream here. 

League of Legends: NA LCS, Korean LCK, Chinese LPL, Taiwan/Hong Hong LMS

League of Legends' esports scene continues to be a nuclear clock, with which we can measure all other things. The LCS, LCK, LPL, and LMS all march merrily onward, drip feeding you high-level competitive LoL at all hours of the day. Korea's LCK is on Saturday (starting at 1am PST/08:00 CET) while China's LPL games start today at 10pm PST (05:00 CET) and then Sunday at 12am PST (07:00 CET). The LMS also enters the fray this weekend, with games at 4am PST (11:00 CET) on Saturday, and then again at 10pm PST (05:00 CET). All of this is going on around the North American LCS, which begins at 12pm PST (19:00 CET) both Saturday and Sunday. You can visit LoLesports for a full schedule and livestream link.

Dota 2: Dota Pit League Season 4

Things ramp back up from the post-Shanghai Major dip with Pit League Season 4 and a $100,000 prize pool, not including the additional prize money from the sale of in-game tickets. Games will kick of on both Saturday and Sunday 10:45 CET (3:45am PST), with the round of 8 being held on the former and the semis and finals on the latter. You can find more information about the tournament on its official site, and watch the stream here.

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Update: ChalkyBrush has since apologised for the borrowed assets and removed them for the game—a swift and clean solution. Hurrah.

Original: Roshpit Champions, the headline game mode in Valve's Custom Game Pass initiative through which creators can charge $1 for in-game extras, has been found to use assets from other mods and games without their creators' permission.

Icons and art from other Workshop projects, like the Adamantine Samurai Helmet from the FrozenYoroi Warrior set and Admiral's Boots taken from Resolute Seafarer, are widespread. One sharp-eyed Redditor managed to identify a set of boots cropped and recoloured from World of Warcraft artwork.

'Borrowing' and reusing assets in mods is commonplace, of course, but the situation becomes complicated when money is involved. The murk in deciding who has ownership, who gets a cut and what permissions are required bears unfortunate similarity to Valve's first paid modding project in which a paid-for fishing mod was found to incorporate another creator's animations without permission. That outcry led Valve to end the initiative.

Roshpit Champions creator ChalkyBrush took to Reddit to defend himself, stating, "Anything submitted to the workshop is Valve's property and can therefore be used in Valve's game. Roshpit Champions is subject to the same rules, making the game also a property of Valve's. You can use any of the code or concepts of Roshpit Champions within the bubble of Dota 2 as well. If there were a way to add proper credits, maybe that would be a good way to show appreciation."

This is a point of contention. The rules governing user-generated content (section 6D in the Steam Subscriber Agreement) read, "you represent and warrant that the Workshop Contribution was originally created by you (or, with respect to a Workshop Contribution to which others contributed besides you, by you and the other contributors, and in such case that you have the right to submit such Workshop Contribution on behalf of those other contributors)."

In addition, Section 2A states that when you upload content to the Workshop you grant a non-exclusive licence for other users to download your contribution for "personal, non-commercial use (except where commercial use is expressly allowed herein or in the applicable Subscription Terms)".

ChalkyBrush's second paragraph is not conciliatory: "Crusader Boots OK, I didn't think a low-res screencap of a screencap would be an issue. The picture is awful anyway and probably needs a replacement. Does blizzard care though? In the end, Blizzard is the only one with the right to complain about this low quality image existing in this little sub-realm of Dota 2. If Blizzard or Valve informs me that this is an issue, I will replace this image."

This discovery is a blow for the fledgling Custom Game Pass—when our Chris Thursten interviewed Valve on how it had learned from the paid modding programme, it made a point of addressing copyright and ownership.

"The community ... had concerns about the potential for stolen content in paid mods," Valve told us. "The Dota team's curation of the process addresses this, requiring a custom game to be free of copyrighted materials to be considered for a pass."

That process still requires some fine-tuning.

Dust2 has been immensely popular ever since it was introduced in the Counter-Strike 1.1 patch. To this day it's by far the most played map. Even though Dust2 slightly favors the terrorist side, it must be considered one of the most balanced competitive maps in the current map pool. Because of the map's popularity people have found lots of different ways to defend the two iconic bombsites.

What I, along with many others, have found over the years is that it's usually easier to go for retakes rather than to stay on the sites and fight to the death. This is especially true for the A-site as there's basically nowhere to hide if you get pushed from both long and short at the same time. Over at B you have more options and a sole player can, with assistance from the mid player, work wonders.

The set up

I like to take control over long early in the round by sending two players over there. The second player can throw a pop flash just around the corner to allow the first player to get over to pit. If the terrorists haven't shown any sort of aggression towards long after a few seconds the second player can rotate back to either A-site or mid, depending on what information you have.

The third player will hold short from above the stairs, ready to drop down to CT-spawn if he spots terrorists. If not and the player in mid has a clear view of catwalk, the short player can push a little bit and go for a quick peek towards lower tunnels for information.

The fourth player will hold mid. Their job is to give the A-players information about anything happening at catwalk, as well as delaying that infamous B-split through mid and tunnels. If the terrorists have an AWP, this can be a bit tricky as you can't peek catwalk without putting your life and the round at risk. Just remember to call out that you don't have control over catwalk anymore.

The fifth player is obviously the B-player. I like to place them either on platform or on the site so that he can fall back after the initial duel. If the stars align and the mid player is ready with a flash, the B-player can pick up two kills, making the retake a lot easier.

Some neat tricks

Dust2 differs from other maps in that you will have to put yourself at risk just to reach one of the sites. I'm of course talking about the doors in mid. A skilled (or lucky) AWPer can take you out just seconds into the round. One option is to put up a smoke screen, but a lot of the time you want to save your smokes for later. Another way to do it is to use a grenade. The black smoke from the explosion works just as good as a smoke grenade, but you'll have to time it right.

Sometimes you want to get a player up on short faster. Those times you can simply boost them from the boxes just outside CT-spawn. The downside is that you'll only have one player over at long for a couple of seconds. Fortunately you can use this smoke to assist them.

Retakes

Unless the terrorists decide to go for a rush, the retake starts long before the bomb goes down. The more information you gather early on, the better decisions you'll be able to make later. Let's say your player on B has spotted some terrorists in tunnels and your friend in mid saw someone peeking from the top of mid. You're on long and it's been all quiet so far. Now you have three options. You can push towards T-spawn which, given the information you have, is a risky play but with great potential reward. You might be able to backstab the terrorist in mid or you can run through T-spawn and be in a great position for a B-retake.

Your second option is to fall back towards the A-site, so that you're closer to B when the attack happens. The risk with that play is that your opponents might decide to go long after all and you won't know until they're around pit. Lastly, you can decide to stay put and wait for more information. However in this case it'll take you ages to get to B when the terrorists execute their strategy in that direction.

That's the general idea. Assess the information you have and make an educated guess as to what your opponents will do next.

This flash can be really effective when you try to retake bombsite B:

If you time it properly with a teammate flashing through tunnels it can work wonders. Remember to communicate: who's going to clear what angles?

This next retake flash is another one that allows you to push right after it pops:

Aim at the sloped area next to the stairs, run and throw. Simple, yet effective. That flash will make it a whole lot easier for your friends in CT-spawn to get closer. And if you're lucky you might pick up a kill if you catch a flashed enemy off guard.

Find all of our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map guides here:

• Inferno Counter-Terrorist guide
• Inferno Terrorist guide
• Cache Counter-Terrorist guide
• Cache Terrorist guide
• Overpass Counter-Terrorist guide
• Overpass Terrorist guide
• Cobblestone Counter-Terrorist guide
• Cobblestone Terrorist guide
• Train Counter-Terrorist guide
• Train Terrorist guide
• Mirage Counter-Terrorist guide
• Mirage Terrorist guide

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Dust2 has been immensely popular ever since it was introduced in the Counter-Strike 1.1 patch. To this day it's by far the most played map. Even though Dust2 slightly favors the terrorist side, it must be considered one of the most balanced competitive maps in the current map pool. Because of the map's popularity people have found lots of different ways to defend the two iconic bombsites.

What I, along with many others, have found over the years is that it's usually easier to go for retakes rather than to stay on the sites and fight to the death. This is especially true for the A-site as there's basically nowhere to hide if you get pushed from both long and short at the same time. Over at B you have more options and a sole player can, with assistance from the mid player, work wonders.

The set up

I like to take control over long early in the round by sending two players over there. The second player can throw a pop flash just around the corner to allow the first player to get over to pit. If the terrorists haven't shown any sort of aggression towards long after a few seconds the second player can rotate back to either A-site or mid, depending on what information you have.

The third player will hold short from above the stairs, ready to drop down to CT-spawn if he spots terrorists. If not and the player in mid has a clear view of catwalk, the short player can push a little bit and go for a quick peek towards lower tunnels for information.

The fourth player will hold mid. Their job is to give the A-players information about anything happening at catwalk, as well as delaying that infamous B-split through mid and tunnels. If the terrorists have an AWP, this can be a bit tricky as you can't peek catwalk without putting your life and the round at risk. Just remember to call out that you don't have control over catwalk anymore.

The fifth player is obviously the B-player. I like to place them either on platform or on the site so that he can fall back after the initial duel. If the stars align and the mid player is ready with a flash, the B-player can pick up two kills, making the retake a lot easier.

Some neat tricks

Dust2 differs from other maps in that you will have to put yourself at risk just to reach one of the sites. I'm of course talking about the doors in mid. A skilled (or lucky) AWPer can take you out just seconds into the round. One option is to put up a smoke screen, but a lot of the time you want to save your smokes for later. Another way to do it is to use a grenade. The black smoke from the explosion works just as good as a smoke grenade, but you'll have to time it right.

Sometimes you want to get a player up on short faster. Those times you can simply boost them from the boxes just outside CT-spawn. The downside is that you'll only have one player over at long for a couple of seconds. Fortunately you can use this smoke to assist them.

Retakes

Unless the terrorists decide to go for a rush, the retake starts long before the bomb goes down. The more information you gather early on, the better decisions you'll be able to make later. Let's say your player on B has spotted some terrorists in tunnels and your friend in mid saw someone peeking from the top of mid. You're on long and it's been all quiet so far. Now you have three options. You can push towards T-spawn which, given the information you have, is a risky play but with great potential reward. You might be able to backstab the terrorist in mid or you can run through T-spawn and be in a great position for a B-retake.

Your second option is to fall back towards the A-site, so that you're closer to B when the attack happens. The risk with that play is that your opponents might decide to go long after all and you won't know until they're around pit. Lastly, you can decide to stay put and wait for more information. However in this case it'll take you ages to get to B when the terrorists execute their strategy in that direction.

That's the general idea. Assess the information you have and make an educated guess as to what your opponents will do next.

This flash can be really effective when you try to retake bombsite B:

If you time it properly with a teammate flashing through tunnels it can work wonders. Remember to communicate: who's going to clear what angles?

This next retake flash is another one that allows you to push right after it pops:

Aim at the sloped area next to the stairs, run and throw. Simple, yet effective. That flash will make it a whole lot easier for your friends in CT-spawn to get closer. And if you're lucky you might pick up a kill if you catch a flashed enemy off guard.

Find all of our Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map guides here:

• Inferno Counter-Terrorist guide
• Inferno Terrorist guide
• Cache Counter-Terrorist guide
• Cache Terrorist guide
• Overpass Counter-Terrorist guide
• Overpass Terrorist guide
• Cobblestone Counter-Terrorist guide
• Cobblestone Terrorist guide
• Train Counter-Terrorist guide
• Train Terrorist guide
• Mirage Counter-Terrorist guide
• Mirage Terrorist guide
• Dust2 Counter-Terrorist guide

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!

Valve are set to announce (any minute now!) a new way for creators of Dota 2 custom games to make money from their work. The 'Custom Game Pass', available as an in-game purchase, will add 'features, content, or other changes' at the discretion of each individual custom game creator. Below you'll find details about the system as well as an in-depth interview with Valve.

If you're unaware, custom games were introduced to Dota 2 in the Reborn update last September. Creators use a powerful toolset to build new modes and minigames within the Dota 2 client, which can then be shared—and played—for free. Popular examples include Pudge Wars, Roshpit Champions, Dota IMBA, and a wide range of tower defense variants (as it happens, we've got a list of the best ones right here.)

The Custom Game Pass will debut with Roshpit Champions, an ambitious project that turns Dota 2 into a co-op dungeon crawler. A $1 purchase will get you access to extra character slots, stash space, and an XP and loot boost for a month.

There are a few key details to note. The first is that all custom games will remain free: the Custom Game Pass can only grant the buyer additional bonuses, and can't gate access to the custom game itself. Secondly, these passes will last thirty days at a time and won't automatically renew. Valve are curating the system themselves, rather than using Greenlight-style user voting, and will only support Custom Game Passes for games "which have already established a sizable community and are mature enough to offer good value to customers."

Custom game creators will receive the same revenue share as any other developer who distributes their work through Steam.

This development marks Valve's return to the idea of paid modding—an idea that backfired when the Skyrim community rejected paid mods in 2015. As with any instance where payment is introduced to a system that was previously entirely free, it's likely that the community will have questions about how their experience will be protected from abuse.

Last week, Valve reached out to PC Gamer in order to settle some of those questions in advance of today's announcement. We challenged them on the failure of the Skyrim paid mods experiment, how Valve plan to curate and manage this new system, and the relationship they intend to build with creators. They also put us in contact with Ryan 'ChalkyBrush' Racioppo, part of the Roshpit Champions team, in order to get a creator's perspective on the system.

We've chosen to present the entire transcript of that Q&A below.

What is the reasoning behind this decision, from both the company and the Dota 2 team's perspective?

Valve: As a company we have our roots in the mod community. We firmly believe the mod community has been responsible for finding many of the unique gameplay experiences we all love today, an obvious example being Dota itself. As we improved the tools available to Dota custom game creators, and saw more and more interesting things coming from that community, we found ourselves pondering this question: in what way is a custom game creator any different from any other developer on Steam?

Both of them are creating brand new experiences. Both often start with a bunch of existing code & assets, whether it's Dota's custom game framework or Unity/Unreal's developer community. Both face similar challenges in design, execution, attaining visibility, managing their community, and so on.

If a custom game creator has built a game that many people love, we think they should have an opportunity to be rewarded for it.

We learned a lot from the community's feedback on paid mods in Skyrim.

To put it bluntly, what is the difference between this initiative and the decision to introduce paid mods to Skyrim—a decision that had to be withdrawn?

Valve: We learned a lot from the community's feedback on paid mods in Skyrim. While it may appear similar on the surface, the system we're providing for custom games is quite different. There are important details to how it works, and we can walk through some of the community's most important concerns so you can see how they informed our design.

One of the first concerns the community had was that paid mods meant an end to free content. In this new system, only a small number of custom games will have passes for sale, and those games will continue to be freely downloadable and playable, with Custom Game Passes representing optional additions.

The community was also worried about quality control and the general 'worthiness' of a mod being paid for. What stopped a mod maker from asking $10 for a minor gameplay tweak? We will be carefully selecting which custom games are able to offer a Custom Game Pass, selecting only games which have already established a sizeable community and are mature enough to offer good value to customers. The community also had concerns about the potential for stolen content in paid mods. The Dota team's curation of the process addresses this, requiring a custom game to be free of copyrighted materials to be considered for a pass.

Another concern the community had was related to ongoing support. What if a creator made a good game, but then stopped supporting it? It's a fact that custom games require ongoing maintenance from their creator, both to update the game with new content, and to adapt to changes in the base game. We think it is important to support the developer in a way that encourages them to build large, vibrant, long-term communities around their games. As a result, we've set Custom Game Passes to have a 30-day duration. This activation period will allow customers to continually reassess their choice to support a game, and to support the creators of the games they most enjoy playing. We also now have a Steam-wide refund system that'll help ensure custom game pass purchasers are happy with their pass.

Customers also had concerns around the fairness of the revenue share between the mod makers and the publisher of the base product. Once we started thinking of custom game creators as being similar to any developer on Steam, it seemed obvious that we should simply use the exact same revenue share.

For ChalkyBrush: what does this mean to you as a creator? Does this change the nature of your relationship with your players?

Ryan 'ChalkyBrush' Racioppo: Fundamentally my relationship with the players will remain the same. I have always treated the players with respect and kept a cool head when faced with seemingly unfair criticism, and I have never silenced anybody's opinions. However, since there is now a more formal contractual obligation between myself and premium players there is a greater responsibility on me to keep the game up to date and bug-free.

The monthly pass aligns my incentives with what the players want, which is more content and bug fixes. If a player is unhappy with the amount of content released in a month, they can choose not to buy a premium pass the following month. The players now have the power to vote for what they want—if I see a month of reduced premium sales, I know the game isn't going in the best direction—and vice versa.

Passes are purely for additional content and are only available to games that have proven themselves to fans.

Will custom game passes be sold through Steam proper, through the Dota 2 client, or both?

Valve: Custom Game Passes will be an item in the Dota 2 store and sold within the Dota client. There will also be a purchase button from the individual Custom Game's home page. The Roshpit Champions pass will sell for $1.

Are passes purely for additional benefits, or can access to a game itself be dependent on purchasing a pass?

Valve: Passes are purely for additional content and are only available to games that have proven themselves to fans.

ChalkyBrush: In the case of Roshpit Champions, the entirety of the game's content will be available to players who are playing for free. The premium pass offers the following benefits:

• Increased Character Save Slots (4 -> 12)
• Increased Stash Space (6 -> 24 slots)
• 50% increased chance of finding rare items and 10% EXP gain, which stacks with other players.

Free players may still have up to 4 characters that can reach the same potential as a premium player and explore all of the same content. Free players even get the Bonus EXP and Magic Find from premium players in their party.

How will the Dota 2 team determine which creators can offer a custom game pass?

Valve: The ability to offer a Custom Game Pass will be something we enable on a game-by-game basis, by looking for games that have been very successful in providing ongoing value to their community of players.

How much communication will there be between creators offering custom game passes and Valve/the Dota 2 team?

Valve: We work closely with many custom games authors today, providing API support, collaboratively tracking down bugs, and getting feedback to steer the feature set of the custom games platform. We expect that relationship to continue with all custom game creators, regardless of whether they choose to offer a Custom Game Pass or not.

ChalkyBrush: So far Valve has been incredibly responsive with me. I think it will be up to the creators to keep the requests or questions at a reasonable level.

Valve will have some responsibility attached to the quality of premium custom games.

Will Valve take a role in quality assurance, or will this be done differently—such as via community voting, a la Greenlight?

Valve: The community will naturally vote with their time and energy by choosing which games to play and how often—we've got pretty good data on that in aggregate. We'll use that data as a filter, and only Custom Games that are successfully providing value to an active community will be able to offer a Custom Game Pass.

ChalkyBrush: Valve will have some responsibility attached to the quality of premium custom games. It would however be extremely difficult to monitor the games once there are many available. For this reason I think there will need to be some community policing—perhaps a review system similar to Steam Games.

Are there restrictions on creators implementing 'pay to win' systems or aggressive monetisation mechanics like energy bars, etc?

Valve: If we see custom game developers designing Custom Game Pass rewards that are hostile to custom game players, we will work with the developers to improve their design. If necessary, we will remove the custom game's right to sell Custom Game Passes. We believe it's unlikely that custom game creators who have successfully created and continuously maintained a high-quality custom game would knowingly destroy both their game and their community with a badly-designed premium reward scheme.

ChalkyBrush: I personally hope so. I wouldn't like to see custom games drop to the level of money-grab mobile games. I have high standards for myself and Roshpit Champions and I would appreciate if peer games did as well.

What standard of customer support does Valve expect from creators who offer game passes? How will support be assessed, and what measures will be taken in the event that creators don't meet Valve's standard?

Valve: We expect creators will be motivated to provide a high level of customer service to their customers. A customer has only paid to support that creator for a month,so it's easy for a customer to decide not to support the game after the one-month pass expires—passes are not subscriptions and do not automatically renew.

ChalkyBrush: As said above a certain level of professionalism should be expected from custom game creators offering premium passes. Probably the most efficient way to assess it is through community reviews. As much as it puts the creators in a vulnerable position, I think Valve should have the ability to withdraw premium access at any time if the game no longer meets their quality standard. I think as long as the players are happy and sales are being made, Valve has no reason to stop a custom game from carrying on offering premium.

Will refunds be available if customers are unhappy with a custom game pass or the service they subsequently receive?

Valve: Yes, Custom Game Passes are refundable. Players have up to 48 hours after purchase to try out a Custom Game Pass and make sure it matches their expectations. We have a page that describes the refund system located here.

To editorialise briefly: Valve's answers suggest to me that they have learned from the mistakes of Skyrim paid modding and their plan for custom game passes seems sound. It's also notable that they have chosen to change the way they communicate about initiatives of this kind. In part, the drama of 2015 was caused by the fact that such a major set of changes were delivered out of nowhere and without external scrutiny. Dota 2's custom game pass seems like a smarter take on the same idea, delivered in a way that will hopefully avoid a repeat of history. Of course, as with Greenlight, custom games themselves, and any such initiative, the proof will be in the way the system develops when it is launched. Valve did not confirm an exact date for the debut of the Custom Game Pass, but expect it soon.

PC Gamer Pro is dedicated to esports and competitive gaming. Check back every day for exciting, fun and informative articles about League of Legends, Dota 2, Hearthstone, CS:GO and more. GL HF!