Counter-Strike is one of the most popular franchises in the gaming industry. CS: GO was released back in mid-2012 by Valve Corporation and still manages to score a peak player base in 2020. Since then it has received its share of major changes and updates for years. But this, 5v5 multiplayer FPS game had been a little quiet for a long time. But recently it has started getting frequent updates, thanks to its new competitor Valorant.
The developers have released a big update on 12/17/2020. And we can learn more about that in detail on their official blog post.
Operation Broken Fang related changes
• CSGO had recently added agent skins to their game which was an interesting update coming from a game that was primarily focused on weapon skins. The player skins were also a bit controversial as it caused some sort of invisibility glitch back then but is now fixed. With the recent update, they have adjusted the first-person arm models for the new agents that were introduced in the latest Operation ‘Broken Fang’.
• They have adjusted the match end animations for Operation Broken Fang master agents.
• There was also a bug in the new operation where players were able to earn an extra star from their missions. They have fixed the issue by this which now limits players to receive the right number of stars that are available from unlocked cards.
• The vote to kick player option is now disabled in Operation Broken Fang Premier pick/ban arenas.
• Another weird issue that was popularly covered on a YouTube video by 3kliksphilip which shows the broken kill distance in the feed, which is now fixed and rounded for display in mission UI.
Other UI/Game related update
• Like every year on completing rank level 40, players will receive a service medal badge for the respective year. The 2023 service medal for outstanding service and achievement has been currently rolled out and will be available to acquire from January 1st, 2023 GMT onwards.
• This one might not be huge but it is definitely an update that was very necessary for some. The panorama UI and the later updates have added so many options to the menu and settings that it is quite horrifying to navigate to the desired settings on the go. In this update, they have added a search bar where players can type the particular setting or option and they’ll be directly navigated to that one.
• Another feature that they have added which was heavily ‘inspired’ from other FPS games like Battalion 1944 and its recent competitor Valorant is the feature of donating weapons to your teammates on request. It can be done by pressing the donation button on the buy menu (which is defaulted to left cntrl). The feature is not that useful as it doesn’t directly add the weapon to the teammate’s inventory, instead, it drops it to the direction the buyer is looking without dropping their primary weapon. Yes, the feature is only useful against the greedy teammate who tries to steal your weapon that used to get dropped while buying another one. A great initiation but average execution.
• The restriction for Zeus in Casual, competitive, and wingman is the same as all other weapons.
• Few retake clip areas are adjusted in Mirage, Nuke, Inferno, Train, and vertigo.
• Apart from these, lots of changes and patches were added to the respective maps, mainly Anubis, Elysion, and Apollo. Detailed information on that will be available on their official blog that was mentioned earlier.
The last line of this update was a bit humorous one as they wrote, ‘Some other minor things 3kliksphillip will probably find out’ at the end of the Anubis map fix section.
We all have previously heard and still often hear that ‘CSGO is a dead game’. It is going for a few years now but we all know it still is as much alive as someone who has just earned their first salary and is spell-bounded on how independent he had become. There were many instances where any new release of an FPS game will generate a wave of people who will shout ‘CSGO is dead’, ‘Switch to something else’. But with the release of Valorant, they have taken a great initiative to provide frequent content and support to the game as many professional CS: GO players and teams have already switched. It is impressive to see CS: GO still kicking after so many years and we hope it will live longer.
