Steam has set a new concurrent users record with over 27 million online.

According to SteamDB, Valve's platform hit a new all-time peak this afternoon of 27,182,165 concurrent users.

That beats Steam's previous best of 26.9 million users online at the same time in April.

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New Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players now need to pay for ranked play, Valve has announced.

Previously, new players of the free-to-play competitive first-person shooter had access to drops, ranks, skill groups, and a free path to Prime (paid) matchmaking.

Valve said that over time, these benefits had become "an incentive for bad actors to hurt the experience of both new and existing players".

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Valve has finally fixed a security vulnerability in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that could be used by hackers to gain remote control of a player's PC - an issue the company had reportedly known about for two years by the time its existence was publicised last week.

News of the exploit was circulated in a tweet by not-for-profit reverse-engineering group The Secret Club. It explained one of its members, Florian, had contacted Valve two years prior to report a remote code execution flaw which made it possible for a hacker to take over a target's PC by tricking them into accepting a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Steam invite.

Although the exploit - one of several vulnerabilities reported to Valve by Secret Club members - had the potential to affect any game utilising Source Engine, The Secret Club stressed only CS:GO was still verifiably at risk. "We cannot say for sure if and when things have been patched in other games throughout the time without us being notified about it," it wrote.

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The FBI is reportedly investigating cheating in professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive matches in North America.

As spotted by Kotaku, the commissioner of the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC), Ian Smith, said the organisation was working alongside the FBI on an ongoing investigation into "a relatively small but significant group of players over a long period of time, organising match fixing in North American MDL".

"[It's] what I would describe as classic match-fixing - players being bribed by outside betting syndicates in order to fix matches, rather than players just doing it off their own bat opportunistically. It's been going on for longer, [and] it's much more organised," Smith told YouTuber slash32.

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A number of professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players have been punished for breaching the Esports Integrity Commission's - ESIC - anti-corruption rules.

"ESIC issues sanctions against 35 players for betting-related offences & extends bans for 2 players previously sanctioned in October 2020," ESIC reported. "ESIC will continue to investigate further offences in Australia, NA and Europe in cooperation with law enforcement."

"Sanctions issued in today's release are not for match-fixing," the organisation adds. "However, ESIC is of the view that there is a high possibility that it will issue match-fixing charges arising from the ongoing investigations, potentially including against players sanctioned today."

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An update to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive this week pulled bots from competitive matches - and now players are remembering them at their best.

Prior to the 7th January update, when a CS:GO player disconnected or was kicked they were replaced by a bot to keep teams even.

Following the update, players who disconnect or are kicked in classic competitive and wingman modes will no longer be replaced by a bot. This means there is no more 5v5 if a player leaves - teams will always be a player down. If the the entire other team leaves, one bot will be left on the other team, idling in spawn.

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Stress levels faced by top-level esports players are equal to those experienced by professional athletes.

That's according to a new study from the University of Chichester, which looked at the psychological impact of major esports contests on those taking part.

The study, titled Identifying Stressors and Coping Strategies of Elite Esports Competitors, will be published in the International Journal of Gaming and Computer-Mediated Simulations.

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Earlier this year, the first major investigation into corruption in Australian esports revealed allegations of professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players rigging matches.

Last month, Kotaku Australia reported six Australians had been arrested in connection with the investigation, but were later released "pending further inquiries".

Now, an ABC News report has revealed an Australian Overwatch Contenders team has found itself under fire also.

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Valve, alongside its business partner in China, Perfect World, has given us an update on the progress of Steam China today, after both companies had been silent on the topic for over a year.

Eurogamer attended the brief presentation, given by Perfect World CEO Dr. Robert H. Xiao in Shanghai, where a small number of local and international press were told the companies were "one more step closer" to launching Steam China, which will be separate from the international version of Steam. A handful of launch games were revealed, including Dota 2 and Dota Underlords. There were no actual launch dates or broader windows mentioned for Steam China itself, mind, nor a look at how that storefront may shape up or any details on its features, barring the fact it'll support VR, multiplayer games, interesting games with "innovative, creative ideas," and "single-player games with abundant storylines". As far as we could tell, none of the non-Chinese launch games had official approval just yet, either.

In Xiao's words, "the Steam China project is undergoing solidly and smoothly" - but what is it, exactly? As it stands, Steam is actually widely available for Chinese players already. As of right now we've tested and confirmed it's possible to buy, download and play games through the Steam store in China as usual, with no issues - and no need for a VPN. Community features, such as discussion forums, are unavailable, but otherwise the platform as it stands still acts as a huge loophole in the Chinese government's strict regulation of games. Where it might take many months of admin and applications for a game to get through the approval process - if it gets through at all - or many revisions to a game's content to ensure it meets the various Chinese standards, that same game can already be bought and played in China, unfiltered, unregistered and unchanged, on regular old Steam.

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It's another day of innovation in the games industry, as the latest CS:GO update introduces respawns and a ping system to the game's battle royale mode.

Update Sirocco brings some major changes to servers, and along with introducing a new desert-themed map (of the same name) it's adding a few mechanics which are becoming rather common in the battle royale genre. The new respawn system will allow players to resurrect "anywhere in the map" providing their squad survives. Players will have the option to either resurrect where they died or pick a new starting spot.

To be fair to CS:GO, this respawn system seems a little different to the one used by Apex Legends - and then Fortnite - which requires squadmates to pick up their teammates' banner and carry it to a respawn beacon. If anything this sounds more like Call of Duty's Down But Not Out mode for Blackout, which similarly just requires squadmates to remain alive before allowing respawns (albeit with each new circle).

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