Dec 14, 2023

Dota 2 - kyled

We've fixed a number issues since the initial Frostivus release:

Fixed an issue with client-side display of Royal Jelly's buff stats
Fixed Safety Bubble having its shield reset to full when dropped and re-equipped
Fixed Unwavering Condition not working properly
Fixed some testing items being purchasable ingame
Added Roshan's Banner to the Glossary
Fixed King Kringle's Skeletons not having the correct hats!
Fixed King Kringle's Skeletons' hoods and portraits
Fixed King Kringle's Skeletons not showing as Frostivus-appropriate in some locales
Fixed the particles for Roshan's Banner sometimes not being properly removed
Improved the look of the Tower Range indicator based on player use and made the danger threshold vary based on player hero level
Fixed various small issues with the 7.35 patchnotes
Fixed an issue with the Vampiric Spirit spell icon for King Kringle
Fixed Jingle Fist Immortal display on the treasure screen
Fixed an issue with movie previews while the Frostivus carousel was cycling during the treasure opening animation

For clarity, Frostivus Gift contents vary per account:

For accounts shared with other users or services: a game ban
For alt accounts used for smurfing: a game ban
For main accounts associated with a banned smurf account: a piece of coal
For all other accounts: free cosmetic items, with higher behavior score accounts receiving higher-tier items

Dec 14, 2023

The Frostivus 2023 Update is Here!

Dota 2 - krAnk0r

Another Frostivus is upon us, and that means King Kringle has awakened from his hibernation under the wine-dark Blood Seas surrounding Frostivus Castle; sent his legions of abducted goblin-child toy miners to dig in his toy mines; hooked up his twin glowing red-eyed direwolves Lumpo and Rupertus to his bone sleigh; and is likely either on top of your house or inside of it right now.

So if you’re on his Nice List, prepare to have your frosty halls decked with new and returning Frostivus cosmetics, a ton of quality-of-life client features, new Dota Plus premium sets, and gameplay patch 7.35, all of which you can read all about right here.

On the other hand, if you’re on the Naughty List, we’ve got great news for everybody else and bad news for you, because this year is gonna be a bloodbath. You might remember back in September, we got out the ban hammer and permanently banned 90,000 smurf accounts. Since then, we've continued to invest in player behavior monitoring, on both the manual and automatic analysis fronts. Over the last few weeks, we've engaged in an even more aggressive ban wave, including many tens of thousands of smurf account bans today alone.

At The International, some pro players reached out to us to talk about their smurf accounts. Those conversations have continued, and there’s broad agreement amongst pros that banning pro smurf accounts is a win for Dota as a community: The rules should apply to everybody, and from now on they will. And smurfing isn’t even the only naughty thing players are getting up to. Amongst other questionable choices, some bad actors are playing like jerks, ruining games and losing behavior score because of it, then hiring behavior score farmers to drive it back up.

Regardless of how you’ve been naughty, we've been watching you (not while you're sleeping, calm down) and we’re cracking down on all of it. Punishments will be handed out for all of the above, including behavior score penalties — and in serious cases, main account bannings.

As we’ve said before, smurfing (and other negative behavior) makes matches worse, and we want to make sure your matches are as good as possible as we head into the new year. So we’d like to wish everyone a Happy Frostivus Update! Except smurf accounts, who we assume will not enjoy the update as they choke on their richly-deserved coal-flavored just desserts.

Frostivus 2023 Treasure Chest:

Each chest contains one of 30 items split across 4 Tiers, or a Cosmically Rare Baby Roshan courier.
Items of the same Tier have equal rarity. You will not receive duplicate items from each Tier until you have received each item once.
Five items from the same Tier can be traded up for a random item from the next Tier.
The Cosmically Rare item is contained in 1 out of 100000 chests. Other chests contain an item from one of the 4 Tiers. Starting with Tier 1, each item has a 10% chance to upgrade to the next Tier.
When opening a chest or trading up for an item, there is a 1 out of 300 chance to receive an additional Unusual item -- either a copy of the item, or if it is a set, one of the items in that set. Each Unusual item has a random special effect. The three effects have equal rarity.

Bug Fixes:

Fixed an issue where if a hero killed in Chronosphere dropped Gem of True Sight, the Gem's cooldown would remain frozen
Fixed a rare crash with item combines
Fixed an issue where if an ability with a frozen cooldown had its cooldown frozen again, it would unfreeze too early
Fixed an issue where abilities with intrinsic buffs could fail to have them applied when purchasing Aghanim's Shard
Fixed an issue where switching abilities (or gaining Aether Lens etc.) wouldn't update the cast range circle if it was already being displayed
Fixed Chaos Knight's Chaos Bolt particles sometimes losing their location
Fixed Dawnbreaker's Starbreaker providing pure damage immunity without Aghanim's Shard
Fixed Earthshaker's Bindings of Deep Magma set to show the correct (new) particles for the new (10th Anniversary) style and to properly delete particles on expiration
Fixed Hoodwink's Bushwhack cast reticule sometimes highlighting trees outside the area of effect
Fixed some animation issues with Tusk's Walrus PUNCH!
Fixed a bug where Vengeful Spirit's Magic Missile with Aghanim's Shard could bounce to invisible enemies immune to True Sight
Fixed an issue with the Voodoo Restoration particles on Witch Doctor's Awaleb's Trundleweed Immortal weapon
Fixed highlighting on the Neutral Item Slot to only highlight when there is at least one free token in the stash, rather than any item from any teammate
Fixed an issue where casting an ability with Alt held down would also ping
Fixed lifetime timers for wards and summoned units being clipped in the HUD
Fixed talent descriptions sometimes being blocked by hotkey names
Fixed Tower denies appearing as chat messages rather than as combat events
Fixed stickers showing as available in Armory even though the capsule containing the stickers might not be available
Fixed showing sticker capsules from ended events as purchasable
Fixed Item Received popup not showing global items properly
Fixed an issue with Play Unranked where ticking Show All Modes could make the section unusable
Fixed sometimes showing pro players' Steam persona names instead of the correct names
Fixed long names overflowing in History and Battle Stats pages
Added an additional notification for Workshop custom game authors that have not yet updated their custom models away from the deprecated pre-ModelDoc format, as described in the 2022 Spring Cleaning update and the Dead Reckoning Update

Dec 13, 2023

The Dark Night Before Frostivus

Dota 2 - kyled

'Twas Frostivus Eve, and all 'cross the map,
The neutrals were quiet, their camps left unstacked.
We'd gorged on a feast of bluehorn and spiced creep,
And had just settled in for a peaceful night's sleep.

When up on the roof, with a house-shaking thud
A creature had landed, and sniffed for our blood.
A sword could be heard being dragged 'cross the shingles;
Then the chimney exploded, and in came King Kringle.

His silhouette stalked through the splintered debris
Of branches and cinders where'd once been our tree.
He righted an armchair (still quietly smoldering)
And sat down with three sacks he'd been up till now shouldering.

"A DARK INCANTATION," his hollow voice boomed
Like a sepulchral drum being banged in a tomb.
"A SACK OF GIFTS PRESENT, A SACK OF GIFTS PAST,
A SACK OF GIFTS TAKEN (BUT OFTEN BROUGHT BACK)."

"Excuse me," I said, crawling out from the rubble,
"The gift that I'd like, if it's not too much trouble:
Please don't kill my children. Please don't kill my wife.
We'd rather you left and spared everyone's life."

He emptied a sack and adjusted his helm.
"THIS FIRST SACK OF GIFTS IS UNKNOWN TO THIS REALM:
THE NEMESIS CURSE, THE WHISPER OF DREAD,
THE MOONLIGHT TIARA, AND MUCH MORE," he said.

In the ensuing silence not a lone breath was drawn.
I coughed to help jog him. "Well, please do go on."
His gauntleted hand dumped sack two on our floor.
It was full of new items! Wait, I'd seen these before...

"SOME GIFTS I'VE IMPROVED, AND SOME I'VE DERANGED.
ALL THAT NEED CONCERN YOU IS THAT THEY HAVE CHANGED.
THE ORB OF CORROSION, ARCANE BOOTS, BLOODTHORN.
THESE AND MORE I HAVE ALTERED SINCE LAST THEY WERE WORN."

We looked through the items he'd spilled on the floor.
"These are lovely," I told him. "But you'd hinted there's more?"
"THE THIRD GIFT," he said as he grabbed the last sack,
"IS MY FAVORITE KIND... THE GIFT I TAKE BACK."

"Not Ring of Aquila! Please not Titan Sliver!"
"Not Penta-Edged Sword!" I sobbed with a quiver.
"I'M TAKING THEM ALL," he said with a laugh.
"AND QUICKENING CHARM AND GOOD OL' QUARTERSTAFF."

Two sacks were now empty; the third one was stuffed.
He grabbed them and back up the chimney he huffed.
He sprang to his bone sleigh and winked a goodbye.
Then flew from the roof and tore open the sky.

And we heard him exclaim, as he left the facilities—
"THE TORMENTOR AND ROSHAN SHALL HAVE NEW ABILITIES!"

Dec 13, 2023

Release Notes for 12/13/23

Counter-Strike 2 - csham

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Added shell eject effects for shotguns
Dropped weapons caused by buy menu purchasing are now dropped below the buyer

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Added all-new 2024 Service Medal which will be available starting January 1st
Fixed an issue that prevented some older demos from playing back
Fixed multiple exploits that allowed adding non-text data into UI labels
Added the ability to add a Friend by using their friend code
Added a lister for multiple lobby invites
Adjusted wear values of some community stickers to better match CS:GO

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Overpass

Adjusted clipping to remove exploitable ledges and improve player movement
Fixed metal railing props that were generating incorrect footstep sounds
Adjusted positions of props and ledges to more accurately match falling damage from CS:GO
Fixed some places where players could get stuck
Adjusted some props and materials to improve character readability
Fixed some cases where weapons could be accidently dropped out of reach
Made some adjustments to props that were creating exploitable lines of sight
Various lighting and material adjustments

Ancient

Adjusted grenade clipping volume at cave entrance