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Majors When we announced the Rio Major, we were excited to bring a CS:GO Major to one of Counter-Strike’s most passionate fan bases. At the time, we couldn’t have imagined the global challenges that have limited live events throughout 2020. We’re not going to ask players and fans to risk their health in order to attend a Major while the pandemic still poses a threat to travelers. Therefore, we have made the painful decision to cancel the November Major. So, what’s the plan? First, we’re going to hold off on scheduling Majors until, at a minimum, Regional Major Ranking (RMR) LAN events are safe to hold around the world. Until then, we expect to continue to hold online RMR events to keep track of the best teams in each region. Coaching Recently we’ve been made aware that several coaches of professional CS:GO teams exploited a bug in the game in order to gain an advantage over their opponents. It is unfortunate and frustrating that we did not respond to this bug sooner. But bugs are the reality of software—and until they are resolved, we need to be able to trust players and coaches. We won’t spend much time here reiterating our stance on the importance of integrity in CS:GO matches. At a minimum, we expect that players and coaches will play by the rules, and immediately pause the match and alert tournament admins if they know of an issue that may give them (or an opponent) an unfair advantage. Any teams that were disqualified for exploiting this bug during an RMR event will have their RMR points reset. As for taking action against individual coaches, we’re going to wait until we get a complete picture of the extent of the bug abuse and the punishments handed down by third parties. Regardless of those penalties, mid-match coaching will always be a tempting opportunity for some teams to violate the integrity of the match. So we may also consider limitations to coaching. We’re looking forward to getting LAN events started again, and hope that we can all find a safe way to do it soon. View the full article

Today’s update includes some networking improvements, updates to Swamp, Mutiny, and Anubis, and an all new weapon case! The Fracture Collection Introducing the Fracture Collection, featuring designs from over 17 different community artists, and including the Shattered Web Knives as rare special items! View the full article

Today we’re introducing two community maps: Swamp and Mutiny. Check them out in Casual or Deathmatch to get your feet wet, and then jump into a Scrimmage for a full match! There’s more in today’s update, check out the release notes here. View the full article

Today we’re shipping changes to CS:GO that are part of our continuing fight against cheating. CS:GO now significantly restricts the types of programs and files that can interact with the game. By default, players will launch CS:GO in Trusted mode, which will block third-party files from interacting with the game. If you would like to play while using third party software that interacts with CS:GO, launch with the -untrusted launch option. Note that in this case your Trust score may be negatively affected. View the full article

Today we’re shipping an optional beta branch of CS:GO with changes that are part of our continuing fight against cheating. To help out, you can opt in to the beta by following the instructions here. CS:GO now significantly restricts the types of programs and files that can interact with the game. In the unlikely event that you launch the game with incompatible files, you will receive a warning indicating the incompatible file and may be blocked from joining VAC-enabled servers. To resolve the issue, you can disable the ‘Trusted Launch’ in your game settings, however this may temporarily impact your trust score. For developers of third-party programs that interact directly with the CS:GO executable process, we have added requirements that will impact your software. Moving forward, all DLLs that interact with CS:GO will need to be digitally signed with an Authenticode signature. Additionally, we will block signed DLLs if their functionality interferes with the game in any way. View the full article

A new music kit featuring Amon Tobin, “All for Dust,” is now available! From the producer who brought you the Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory OST, Amon Tobin lends his unique aesthetic to CS:GO… this time through tube amplifiers. Dust off this new kit, good luck and have fun! View the full article

Since CS:GO’s release in 2012, some of the most common feedback we’ve received has been about the challenge of spotting characters in the world. Because every map in the game features significant variety of lighting and detail, even characters designed to read well in a map might get lost when viewed from a particular angle in a particular location. We’ll continue to address feedback about specific problem spots by making adjustments to maps, but today we’re also shipping several new improvements to the way characters are rendered. Boosting Player Contrast To improve character read across all maps and locations, we’ve added a new graphics setting called ‘Boost Player Contrast’ which is enabled by default. It’s a special post process filter that applies to stationary characters, creating local contrast so that characters stand out from the background. This is now enabled by default and you can find the new setting in Video->Advanced Video->‘Boost Player Contrast’. Here’s what it does: — Increases the character’s contrast against the background at far distances. — Strengthens edge pixels for characters at far distances. — Creates a small blur around a character to reduce background noise. — Creates a small contrasting halo around a character when there is no color difference between the character and the environment. In addition to the changes above, we modified the textures of some character models (and custom-authored the coarse mipmap levels in some cases), and adjusted fog. In CS:GO, fog is applied separately to characters and the rest of the world. To help characters stand out from the background at longer distances, we’ve decreased the fogging on characters across all maps (and slightly increased the world fog in Dust 2). Map changes In addition to the ‘Boost Player Contrast’ setting, we’re continuing to improve visibility by changing specific areas of maps. A Closer Read Jump into a server and see how the characters look! Today’s update should improve character read in most cases, but we know that there’s more to be done. If you identify specific situations where you think the new tools aren’t helping you, please contact us at [email protected] using the subject line “Agent Read”. Include an explanation of what happened and a link to a screenshot. View the full article

[ GAMEPLAY ] – The killfeed now displays players that are killed by C4 explosions in all game modes. – Players that are frozen by game logic no longer take damage. – Players are less likely to become stuck on mid-air grenades, and are now able to stand up when crouched on top of another player’s decoy grenade. – Grenades are less likely to phase through doors when thrown into nearby players, and have improved collision when bouncing near the ground around player’s feet. [ RENDERING ] – Adjusted sticker shader to reduce mip artifacts on holographic stickers at an angle. – Optimized shadow culling frustum to prevent flickering shadows caused by renderable overflow at ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9. – Optimized texture generation by giving composite textures destined for models that are already rendering higher priority in the generation queue. – Added a trailing cache of composite inputs, designed to optimize composite generation for sequences of similar jobs. – More asynchronous texture requests are allowed per cycle, allowing composites to generate faster on some systems. – Added an experimental graphics setting; ‘Texture Streaming’ in video options. Texture streaming allows the game to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they are needed for rendering, potentially saving a significant amount of video memory. On systems with slower disk access, streaming textures may be momentarily visible. [ UI / LOCALIZATION ] – Added a new Anubis main menu background movie to the game. – Added a way for users to change their main menu background scenery. – Split stickers and patches localization UI tokens to allow for better translations. – Added proper HTML-escaping for custom inventory item names when applying and scraping stickers. [ STORE ] – Added Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule featuring a variety of stickers from the Warhammer 40,000 series. [ STEAM ] – Updated Steamworks SDK and Steam libraries to the latest versions released in May 2020. – If the game fails to connect with local Steam Client, then users must update their version of Steam Client by selecting Steam > Check for Steam Client Updates… View the full article

[ GAMEPLAY ] – The killfeed now displays players that are killed by C4 explosions in all game modes. – Players that are frozen by game logic no longer take damage. – Players are less likely to become stuck on mid-air grenades, and are now able to stand up when crouched on top of another player’s decoy grenade. – Grenades are less likely to phase through doors when thrown into nearby players, and have improved collision when bouncing near the ground around player’s feet. [ RENDERING ] – Adjusted sticker shader to reduce mip artifacts on holographic stickers at an angle. – Optimized shadow culling frustum to prevent flickering shadows caused by renderable overflow at ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9. – Optimized texture generation by giving composite textures destined for models that are already rendering higher priority in the generation queue. – Added a trailing cache of composite inputs, designed to optimize composite generation for sequences of similar jobs. – More asynchronous texture requests are allowed per cycle, allowing composites to generate faster on some systems. – Added an experimental graphics setting; ‘Texture Streaming’ in video options. Texture streaming allows the game to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they are needed for rendering, potentially saving a significant amount of video memory. On systems with slower disk access, streaming textures may be momentarily visible. [ UI / LOCALIZATION ] – Added a new Anubis main menu background movie to the game. – Added a way for users to change their main menu background scenery. – Split stickers and patches localization UI tokens to allow for better translations. – Added proper HTML-escaping for custom inventory item names when applying and scraping stickers. [ STORE ] – Added Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule featuring a variety of stickers from the Warhammer 40,000 series. [ STEAM ] – Updated Steamworks SDK and Steam libraries to the latest versions released in May 2020. – If the game fails to connect with local Steam Client, then users must update their version of Steam Client by selecting Steam > Check for Steam Client Updates… View the full article

[ GAMEPLAY ] – The killfeed now displays players that are killed by C4 explosions in all game modes. – Players that are frozen by game logic no longer take damage. – Players are less likely to become stuck on mid-air grenades, and are now able to stand up when crouched on top of another player’s decoy grenade. – Grenades are less likely to phase through doors when thrown into nearby players, and have improved collision when bouncing near the ground around player’s feet. [ RENDERING ] – Adjusted sticker shader to reduce mip artifacts on holographic stickers at an angle. – Optimized shadow culling frustum to prevent flickering shadows caused by renderable overflow at ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9. – Optimized texture generation by giving composite textures destined for models that are already rendering higher priority in the generation queue. – Added a trailing cache of composite inputs, designed to optimize composite generation for sequences of similar jobs. – More asynchronous texture requests are allowed per cycle, allowing composites to generate faster on some systems. – Added an experimental graphics setting; ‘Texture Streaming’ in video options. Texture streaming allows the game to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they are needed for rendering, potentially saving a significant amount of video memory. On systems with slower disk access, streaming textures may be momentarily visible. [ UI / LOCALIZATION ] – Added a new Anubis main menu background movie to the game. – Added a way for users to change their main menu background scenery. – Split stickers and patches localization UI tokens to allow for better translations. – Added proper HTML-escaping for custom inventory item names when applying and scraping stickers. [ STORE ] – Added Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule featuring a variety of stickers from the Warhammer 40,000 series. [ STEAM ] – Updated Steamworks SDK and Steam libraries to the latest versions released in May 2020. – If the game fails to connect with local Steam Client, then users must update their version of Steam Client by selecting Steam > Check for Steam Client Updates… View the full article

[ GAMEPLAY ] – The killfeed now displays players that are killed by C4 explosions in all game modes. – Players that are frozen by game logic no longer take damage. – Players are less likely to become stuck on mid-air grenades, and are now able to stand up when crouched on top of another player’s decoy grenade. – Grenades are less likely to phase through doors when thrown into nearby players, and have improved collision when bouncing near the ground around player’s feet. [ RENDERING ] – Adjusted sticker shader to reduce mip artifacts on holographic stickers at an angle. – Optimized shadow culling frustum to prevent flickering shadows caused by renderable overflow at ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9. – Optimized texture generation by giving composite textures destined for models that are already rendering higher priority in the generation queue. – Added a trailing cache of composite inputs, designed to optimize composite generation for sequences of similar jobs. – More asynchronous texture requests are allowed per cycle, allowing composites to generate faster on some systems. – Added an experimental graphics setting; ‘Texture Streaming’ in video options. Texture streaming allows the game to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they are needed for rendering, potentially saving a significant amount of video memory. On systems with slower disk access, streaming textures may be momentarily visible. [ UI / LOCALIZATION ] – Added a new Anubis main menu background movie to the game. – Added a way for users to change their main menu background scenery. – Split stickers and patches localization UI tokens to allow for better translations. – Added proper HTML-escaping for custom inventory item names when applying and scraping stickers. [ STORE ] – Added Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule featuring a variety of stickers from the Warhammer 40,000 series. [ STEAM ] – Updated Steamworks SDK and Steam libraries to the latest versions released in May 2020. – If the game fails to connect with local Steam Client, then users must update their version of Steam Client by selecting Steam > Check for Steam Client Updates… View the full article

[ GAMEPLAY ] – The killfeed now displays players that are killed by C4 explosions in all game modes. – Players that are frozen by game logic no longer take damage. – Players are less likely to become stuck on mid-air grenades, and are now able to stand up when crouched on top of another player’s decoy grenade. – Grenades are less likely to phase through doors when thrown into nearby players, and have improved collision when bouncing near the ground around player’s feet. [ RENDERING ] – Adjusted sticker shader to reduce mip artifacts on holographic stickers at an angle. – Optimized shadow culling frustum to prevent flickering shadows caused by renderable overflow at ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9. – Optimized texture generation by giving composite textures destined for models that are already rendering higher priority in the generation queue. – Added a trailing cache of composite inputs, designed to optimize composite generation for sequences of similar jobs. – More asynchronous texture requests are allowed per cycle, allowing composites to generate faster on some systems. – Added an experimental graphics setting; ‘Texture Streaming’ in video options. Texture streaming allows the game to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they are needed for rendering, potentially saving a significant amount of video memory. On systems with slower disk access, streaming textures may be momentarily visible. [ UI / LOCALIZATION ] – Added a new Anubis main menu background movie to the game. – Added a way for users to change their main menu background scenery. – Split stickers and patches localization UI tokens to allow for better translations. – Added proper HTML-escaping for custom inventory item names when applying and scraping stickers. [ STORE ] – Added Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule featuring a variety of stickers from the Warhammer 40,000 series. [ STEAM ] – Updated Steamworks SDK and Steam libraries to the latest versions released in May 2020. – If the game fails to connect with local Steam Client, then users must update their version of Steam Client by selecting Steam > Check for Steam Client Updates… View the full article

Today we’re releasing the Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule, featuring 17 unique stickers from the 40K universe. From the paper Full Buy sticker to the foil Chaos Space Marine, collect and apply them to your weapons today; the Capsule is now available in-game! A Change of Scenery The next time you launch CS:GO you’ll find a new Video Setting which allows you to change your main menu background. Whether you prefer a light or dark feel, Anubis or Phoenix Facility, there’s something for everyone. Small Details Lastly, we’ve recently added kill feed icons for blind kills, kills through smoke, flash kills, and no scope sniper kills. Today we’re adding a new kill feed icon when players die from C4 explosions. Look for these the next time a CT forgets their Defuse Kit! View the full article

Today we’re releasing the Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule, featuring 17 unique stickers from the 40K universe. From the paper Full Buy sticker to the foil Chaos Space Marine, collect and apply them to your weapons today; the Capsule is now available in-game! A Change of Scenery The next time you launch CS:GO you’ll find a new Video Setting which allows you to change your main menu background. Whether you prefer a light or dark feel, Anubis or Phoenix Facility, there’s something for everyone. Small Details Lastly, we’ve recently added kill feed icons for blind kills, kills through smoke, flash kills, and no scope sniper kills. Today we’re adding a new kill feed icon when players die from C4 explosions. Look for these the next time a CT forgets their Defuse Kit! View the full article

Today we’re releasing the Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule, featuring 17 unique stickers from the 40K universe. From the paper Full Buy sticker to the foil Chaos Space Marine, collect and apply them to your weapons today; the Capsule is now available in-game! A Change of Scenery The next time you launch CS:GO you’ll find a new Video Setting which allows you to change your main menu background. Whether you prefer a light or dark feel, Anubis or Phoenix Facility, there’s something for everyone. Small Details Lastly, we’ve recently added kill feed icons for blind kills, kills through smoke, flash kills, and no scope sniper kills. Today we’re adding a new kill feed icon when players die from C4 explosions. Look for these the next time a CT forgets their Defuse Kit! View the full article

Today we’re releasing the Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule, featuring 17 unique stickers from the 40K universe. From the paper Full Buy sticker to the foil Chaos Space Marine, collect and apply them to your weapons today; the Capsule is now available in-game! A Change of Scenery The next time you launch CS:GO you’ll find a new Video Setting which allows you to change your main menu background. Whether you prefer a light or dark feel, Anubis or Phoenix Facility, there’s something for everyone. Small Details Lastly, we’ve recently added kill feed icons for blind kills, kills through smoke, flash kills, and no scope sniper kills. Today we’re adding a new kill feed icon when players die from C4 explosions. Look for these the next time a CT forgets their Defuse Kit! View the full article

Today we’re releasing the Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule, featuring 17 unique stickers from the 40K universe. From the paper Full Buy sticker to the foil Chaos Space Marine, collect and apply them to your weapons today; the Capsule is now available in-game! A Change of Scenery The next time you launch CS:GO you’ll find a new Video Setting which allows you to change your main menu background. Whether you prefer a light or dark feel, Anubis or Phoenix Facility, there’s something for everyone. Small Details Lastly, we’ve recently added kill feed icons for blind kills, kills through smoke, flash kills, and no scope sniper kills. Today we’re adding a new kill feed icon when players die from C4 explosions. Look for these the next time a CT forgets their Defuse Kit! View the full article

Today’s update includes an experimental warmup mode, a way to view (and copy) players’ crosshairs while spectating, a new set of Music Kits, and more! The Masterminds Music Kits Introducing the The Masterminds Music Kit Box, featuring music kits from seven composers. Standard and StatTrak music kit boxes are now available for purchase. Warming Up Get a few reps in before the match begins with an experimental 1v1 warmup mode! The experimental warmup is currently limited to Wingman matches on Train and Vertigo, and may be added to other maps and Competitive Matchmaking in the future. Share Your View Wondering how your teammates see the world? As a spectator you can now view other players’ crosshairs. By default you will see crosshairs of your friends and party members, but you can change your settings to view everyone (or just your own). See one you like? Click a player on the scoreboard to copy their crosshair. There’s more in today’s update, view the release notes for details! View the full article

The Rio Major will take place in November and, as the only Major of 2020, the prize pool will be $2,000,000. It will have been more than a year since the last Major. To ensure that the Rio Major features the top teams in the world, we will require that current Legends and Challengers demonstrate that they are still in top form. Due to the difficulty in travel for the foreseeable future, we’re going to do that regionally. Regional Major Rankings All teams participating in the November Rio Major will earn their invites through regional rankings, which will be updated based on their performance in upcoming Regional Major Ranking competitions. Teams competing in an RMR series will receive Major Ranking points based on their placement. We will have more details on the point distribution once we have a final list of the Major Ranking competitions between now and the Rio Major. The first RMR series will be in May, and we intend to have one more RMR series in the Fall. Additionally, if tournament organizers are interested in modifying their previously planned 2020 events to be RMR competitions, they should reach out to us. For us to consider an event for Major ranking, it must invite the top RMR teams in the region and hold qualifiers for the remainder. The event can be of any format, any prize pool, any duration, and either online, LAN, or a combination of the two. November Rio Invitations 24 teams will be invited to the November Rio Major from six different regions based on their Regional Major Ranking. In total, there are 8 Legend, 8 Challenger, and 8 Contender invitations available. Each region will be allocated invites to the Major based on that region’s performance in the preceding Major. Based on the results of the 2019 Berlin Major, the invitations for each region are as follows: November Rio Invitation Distribution EUR CIS NA SA AS OC Legends 3 2 3* 0 0 0 Challengers (formerly Returning Challengers) 5 1 2* 0 0 0 Contenders (formerly New Challengers) 2 2 1 1 1 1 Total Invitations 10 5 6 1 1 1 *Teams currently unable to travel to their native region are invited to defend their invitations in the region where they are currently situated. The 2020 May RMR Series The first series of these RMR competitions will be in May and will be hosted by ESL. All teams that would have been invited to the May Rio Major or the May Rio Minors will be invited to compete for position in their region. Current Legends and Challengers will start with some Regional Major Ranking points. FAQ Q. How are the Regional Major Rankings calculated? The Regional Major Rankings will be points-based, and the value of events closer to the Major will be greater than earlier events. However, we won’t have a detailed breakdown before we’ve finalized the RMR events for the year. Q. Will there be Minors for the November Rio Major? There will be no Minors ahead of the November Rio Major. Regional Major Rankings will be used to determine all 24 teams participating in the November Rio Major. There will not be a separate path for teams to qualify. Q. What happens to teams who were invited to the May Minors? For the first Regional Major Ranking series in May, teams qualified for the May Minors (and/or qualifiers for those Minors) will be invited to participate in their respective region’s competition. For later RMR competitions, participants will be invited based on their regional ranking, with additional slots available to teams determined by qualifiers. Q. What happens to the Minor prize pool? Valve will sponsor the May and Fall Regional Major Ranking series. Each of those events will feature a prize pool of $255,000, divided across each region based on the number of Legends and Challengers invitations available for that region. The minimum prize pool in a region will be $10,000. Q. What determines what region a team competes in? Given the circumstances, teams’ regions are determined by their current location. Q. What happens if a team changes region? Regional Major Rankings only represents a team’s performance relative to other teams in the region. Therefore, any region change by a team will result in a reset of the team’s Major Ranking points. Q. Can a team change their roster? Teams can change up to two members of their roster in the lead up to an event at a cost of 20% of the team’s points, per player. They can adjust their roster prior to the roster lock for each Regional Major Ranking competition. View the full article

Operation Shattered Web wraps up today. Thanks to all of the CS:GO players who participated–over the span of the operation, they completed over 136 million missions! The operation may be over, but there’s more to see in today’s update. New Maps Today we are adding two community created maps to our official matchmaking pool in Scrimmage and Casual game modes. Check out Anubis and Chlorine, two of the top finalists in Mapcore’s 2019 Exotic Places map contest. Prisma 2 Collection Today we’re also introducing the Prisma 2 Collection! Lightly based on Anime/Manga themes, the collection features 17 community created weapon finishes, as well as the chance to receive one of the Horizon knives in Chroma finishes. View the full article

Half-Life: Alyx launches March 23rd, and we’re celebrating the release in CS:GO! Half-Life themed Stickers, Collectible Pins, and Patches are now available for purchase in-game. Valve Index If you purchased Valve Index hardware prior to Alyx’s release, you’ll receive a Genuine version of the Alyx Pin from the new collection, as well as an exclusive Half-Life: Alyx Music Kit! View the full article

[ MISC ] – Updated Diamond Operation Coin materials. – Fixed several respawn-related bugs in the Co-op Strike mission. – Fixed a bug in exploding barrels sometimes awarding multiple points towards mission progress. – Fixed a UI error showing negative number of missions for Diamond Operation Coin owners. – Fixed a UI error in workshop maps. – Updated Mac-10 texture UVs for Inferno 2019 Collection. View the full article

We’re in the final weeks of Operation Shattered Web, and players have until March 30th to play missions, earn progress, and redeem Operation rewards. Today the final mission card goes live which means we’ll start issuing Diamond Operation Coins to users who have completed 100 missions. This week’s card, “Time To Take Out The Trash”, includes a second co-op Strike mission tasking players with finding and eliminating Franz Kriegeld. Don’t let him escape! View the full article

We’re in the final weeks of Operation Shattered Web, and players have until March 30th to play missions, earn progress, and redeem Operation rewards. Today the final mission card goes live which means we’ll start issuing Diamond Operation Coins to users who have completed 100 missions. This week’s card, “Time To Take Out The Trash”, includes a second co-op Strike mission tasking players with finding and eliminating Franz Kriegeld. Don’t let him escape! View the full article

[ OPERATION SHATTERED WEB ] – Added all operation missions for Week 16. [ MISC ] – Materials now store an internal parameter precache to reduce the need for disk access during gameplay. – Fixed a regression with player models in Danger Zone. [ MAPS ] Vertigo – Fixed server lag exploit – Fixed minor graphical bugs View the full article