The latest update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive brings both good news and bad news for players in the Netherlands. Steam trading and Steam Market functionality, which were disabled last month, have been re-enabled, but players in the country, as well as Belgium, are no longer able to open containers—which is to say, loot boxes. 

Market and item trading were switched off after the Netherlands Gaming Authority ruled that some videogame loot boxes—it didn't reveal which—were in violation of the country's gambling laws and therefore had to be changed, with a deadline set for June 20. Valve said at the time that it didn't "understand or agree with" the ruling, and had contacted the Gambling Authority for clarification; in the meantime, "our only practical alternative is to disable trading and Steam," it explained.

Belgium issued a similar ruling on loot boxes shortly after the Netherlands and specifically named CS:GO, along with Overwatch and FIFA 18, as being in contravention of the law, but did not set a deadline for compliance. 

Re-enabling the CS:GO market, but disabling cases, means that players in the Netherlands will be able to buy and sell items directly, but not partake in the randomized luck-of-the-draw of lootboxes. That probably won't make CS:GO fans who like to play the ponies very happy, but it's presumably enough to keep Valve out of legal trouble, and it's better than the across-the-board shutdown that Valve went with originally. 

The latest CS:GO patch notes are available in full at counter-strike.net.

After teasing us for months about CS:GO eventually getting updated to use the “Panorama” interface that Dota 2 has been using since its Reborn update in June 2015, Valve has finally released a public beta of CS:GO with the new UI up and running. This was one of our big wishlist items for CS:GO in 2018, and I’m happy to report that it's pretty darn good.

Admittedly, the bar has been set pretty low for Panorama, as the existing CS:GO interface is nothing to write home about. It’s looked more or less the same since the game’s release in 2012; a ton of game features and their respective menu options have been added since then, but the overall look and feel of the UI has remained pretty static. Big structural issues, like the fact that you can’t navigate any of the inventory or loadout options while you’re in a lobby with your friends, have been left unaddressed for years, and aesthetically it’s about what you’d expect from a game released in 2012.

Fortunately, those days appear to be behind us, as the Panorama update is a complete overhaul that replaces virtually every UI asset. Going through the menus in the public beta, it’s hard to spot much of anything that hasn’t gotten the Panorama treatment, which is a good thing, since the end result is a much more modern-feeling game.

The visual facelift isn’t the only thing Panorama has to offer either. It also introduces some clever new features, like a landing page that shows you recent news posts (a common and useful element in most recent multiplayer games), some new explanatory tooltips, and a handy table that shows you what your teammates have equipped themselves with when you’re in the buy menu. You can now navigate the various pre-match menus while sitting in a lobby with your party.

It’s worth reiterating that this is just a beta, and as such, not all the kinks have been ironed out yet. A bunch of the console commands don’t work properly, there are a couple actions that will get you stuck on an inescapable menu screen, and there’s something a bit weird going on with the way your crosshair is rendered. There’s a big thread full of bug reports on the CS:GO subreddit, so it may be a little while yet before Panorama is ready for primetime. Valve has already released its first patch for the beta version, however, and seem keen to get it ready for final release in short order.

What's not to like

There are also a couple stylistic choices that seem a bit questionable, and not being bugs, they seem unlikely to be changed before the update goes live unless the community gets extremely up in arms about them. Foremost among these annoyances is the background treatment for the new scoreboard; in the old UI, the scoreboard simply darkened the area of the screen it occupied enough for you to see the white scoreboard text, allowing you to see through it fairly easily. The Panorama version applies a blur effect instead, making it largely impossible to see your crosshair or any environmental details in the middle of your screen. For players who tend to compulsively check the scoreboard during the round, this is a big downgrade, and looks an awful lot like Valve trying to fix something that wasn’t broken.

Another head-scratcher is the inclusion on the main landing page of a big, animated player model right in the middle.This format has become pretty ubiquitous of late, perhaps due to its appearance in DayZ and PUBG, but it makes little sense in a game with, at the moment, virtually no cosmetic character customization to speak of. Surely there are more fruitful bits of information this screen real estate could be used for in CS:GO.

Minor quibbles aside, Panorama has survived the migration from Dota 2 to CS:GO remarkably intact. Given how enormous of an upgrade it is over the dated UI we’ve been using until now, one gets the impression of playing a whole new game upon first sight of the new main menu.

It’s a breath of fresh air to see Valve taking big steps like this to modernize CS:GO. One of the longtime complaints of the Counter-Strike community has been that despite boasting similar player numbers to Dota 2, it never feels like CS:GO gets nearly the same amount of love from its developers, and I suspect an update like this will help assuage that bitterness in the hearts of Counter-Strike’s crustiest detractors.

Here’s to hoping Valve can continue shipping substantive, high-quality updates like this going forward, and we can all stop reading snide HLTV comments about how Counter-Strike is a dying game.

In April, a study of loot boxes by the Netherlands Gaming Authority concluded four out of ten videogames considered fell foul of the country's gambling laws. And while specific games were not named at the time, the regulator body warned that "enforcement action" would be taken against any games that failed to meet legal requirements by June 20. 

That's today, of course, and it now appears loot boxes in both Valve's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 have been deemed illegal. As reported by tweakers.net (via Reddit), players of both games were met today with a message from Valve detailing the sanctions. 

As posted by Reddit user hollandje, here's the message in full:

Dear Counter-Strike: Global Offensive customers,

In May, we received two letters from the Dutch Kansspelautoriteit, stating that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Dota 2 contain ‘loot boxes’ that violate the Dutch Betting and Gaming Act. The Kansspelautoriteit accusation is different from how other countries think about loot boxes, so we hired Dutch legal counsel, looked at the recent Study into Loot Boxes published by the Kansspelautoriteit, and learned more about Dutch law. We still don’t understand or agree with the Kansspelautoriteit’s legal conclusion, and we’ve responded to explain more about CS:GO and Dota 2.

In the meantime, we have a threat from the Kansspelautoriteit to prosecute Valve if we don’t implement a remedy by June 20. The letters don’t tell us how to do that, but the Study into Loot Boxes does contain one rather simplistic statement:

"Loot boxes contravene the law if the in-game goods from the loot boxes are transferable. Loot boxes do not contravene the law if the in-game goods from the loot boxes are not transferable."

So for now our only practical alternative is to disable trading and Steam Marketplace transfers for CS:GO and Dota 2 items for Dutch customers. We apologize to you for this inconvenience. We hope that, after more engagement with the Kansspelautoriteit, they may refine their legal demands and we can find a solution that is less inconvenient.

This move follows Belgium's loot box injunctions, whose Gambling Commission also ruled against loot boxes in Overwatch, FIFA 18, and CS:GO in April. A deadline was not set in this instance, however it will be interesting to see how Belgian authorities proceed in light of the above.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive got a major visual update today in the form of the new Panorama UI. Valve described the overhauled interface as "the most substantial change to the look and feel of CS:GO since the game was released in 2012."

"From the Main Menu to the Scoreboard, the entire experience of interacting with the game has been updated," Valve said. Unfortunately, it's not actually finished, and so this release only supports the "practice with bots" option, either solo or with a friend. 

As Dot Esports pointed out, this is actually the second game to get the Panorama treatment: Valve gave Dota 2 a Panorama update last year. In order to check out CS:GO's hot new look yourself you'll have to opt in to a beta depot, which you can learn about here.