In what appears to be bizarre effort to avoid oversight for its loot boxes, the developers of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have added a controversial new feature. The new feature is exclusive to France, where lawmakers are currently evaluating new regulations regarding loot boxes and gambling in video games. The feature, in an extremely limited fashion, allows players to look inside of a loot box prior to spending money to unlock it. And Valve clearly believes it will help CS:GO avoid additional scrut
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive was released about a decade ago, and the Counter-Strike franchise is much older than that, but it still has a massive player base of casual fans and professional Twitch streamers alike. In fact, according to Steam stats for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , the player numbers are just rising. click this might be due to some of the best esports tournaments around, or perhaps thanks to interesting personalities and professional competitors creating quality content on Twi
Arguably the greatest Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player ever to walk the earth is also a Twitch streamer. When s1mple isn't sniping down the world's best in tournaments around the world, he likes to make sure he's never out of form. Training is what makes even the best in one of the hardest competitive multiplayer video games even better. This one does it in public, usually by joining his fellow pro players in FPL games. When he picks up the AWP, or Desert Eagle for that matter, there's a high likelihood that a Reddit clip is in the making. He might not be available during grueling tournaments, but rest assured, he'll be back to his over 3 million Twitch followers after bringing home the tro
As the competitive season has once again started in Counter-Strike , streamers are likely to activate with the increased interest in the game. While some of the best streamers might take days off during tournaments, many of them keep their form on off-days by grinding FACEIT or playing with their friends. It's possible that some featured streamers even hop into a Danger Zone game for entertainment value, offer expensive CS:GO skins as giveaways to viewers, or go through their scheduled aim training regimen. With peaks of more than a million concurrent players, CS:GO community offers a lucrative market for streaming tale
It's currently unclear why Valve moved forward with these changes in France, in particular. So far France has not enacted any new regulations to account for loot boxes in video games, though French courts did recently rule that Steam has to allow users to resell their digital games . In 2018, the French online gambling regulatory body even assessed that loot boxes were not gambling under the country's current regulation. Perhaps Valve is using France as a testing bed or perhaps the decision is intended to shift discourse within the country or Europe. Either way, Valve certainly appears to be taking steps to protect the profits it receives from loot boxes amid the growing international controve
Indeed, the glorious cherry on top of the cake, is that should Valve's VAC system detect ScriptKid's fake cheat mod, it will help bring the trolled cheaters to their notice, and towards the just punishment of a ban. Viewers of the latest video have suggested Call of Duty: Warzone , Team Fortress 2 , and Dota 2 , as the next games that need help to tackle the cheat
While many CS:GO players were frustrated to hear that Valve has seemingly halted work on the Source 2 engine, the long-standing tenure of the original Source engine has allowed modders to grow comfortable with the game's framework, and produce a staggering breadth of content. However, if the Source 2 is implemented into CS:GO after all , custom maps like Kaer Morhen will likely need to be redone after the upgr
The map creator, ZelezoBeton, notes that the map is not a perfect, 1:1 replica, but a specific transformation made with CS:GO in mind. The map requires the Trouble in Terrorist Town plugin to run, which is an alternate game mode where terrorist forces have secret traitors seeded in their ranks. Despite this requirement, the map supports the standard, classic multiplayer modes as well as other custom modes. The map will likely never be featured in official competitive play, but it seems to stack up solidly against CS:GO 's official roster of ma
As if that isn't frustrating enough, Valve has apparently “preloaded” the X-Ray Scanner with an item already. Meaning that players will have to purchase this item, regardless of whether they want it, in order to use the X-Ray Scanner on a loot box. The X-Ray Scanner may appear to be beneficial to players, but ultimately is just another effort at encouraging players to begin purchasing microtransactions . There's little reason to believe it's significantly beneficial over
Here's how the full feature technically works. In CS:GO , players are able to either earn loot boxes through gameplay or buy them from other players. However, these loot boxes can only be opened by paying for a key. The new feature is called the X-Ray Scanner and allows players to place one loot box into it to reveal the item inside. However, and here's the trick, once an item has been scanned by the X-Ray Scanner, players will have “claim” the item buy purchasing a key to unlock it before being able to look inside another loot