Ever since the pandemic-related restrictions started to take effect in esports, gamers have been much more aware of updates — or the lack thereof — for their favorite titles. In Counter-Strike case, while the game has never seen updates as frequently as other esports titles, the pandemic in full effect has brought its lack of major changes to the spotlight. Now, a part of the community going as far as calling it ‘stale’.

Whether you agree or disagree with Valve’s instance on CSGO major updates, one thing is clear. The pandemic has made the lack of major updates a more noticeable issue, at the same time that it has also made developing those updates more complicated to developers.

However, CSGO might be finally getting a considerable update later this year. This past week have seen Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Twitter accounts pushing various mysterious posts, some more obvious than others. Along with past rumors, it’s fair game to assume that a decently-sized update might be on the horizon. Let’s take a look at what has been popping recently on the rumor mill and discuss it!

Teasers from the official CSGO account

This past Tuesday, CSGO on Twitter published twice a story with a simple message. “Counter-Strike.” was all it said. Yet, it was enough to spark discussion about a possible update coming, or even a whole new game — mostly just for fun. While the latter might sound completely unrealistic, with the Steam Deck, Valve’s newest console coming later this year, there might be a small possibility after all. In any case, the speculation started and the people behind CSGO on Twitter wouldn’t stop there.

A day later, CSGO returned to Twitter with another post, which kept the fun speculations going for another day. While it was fun, the real interesting posts from that account started to be posted on Thursday.

If you load up your “utility expert” with 4 of your 5 team molotovs or smokes, that definitely creates new opportunities. And at the same time—a ton of risk. Interesting to think about…

— CS:GO (@CSGO) July 29, 2021

The above tweet can be seen as the CSGO team teasing about changes about how utility works in the game. In that case, utility refers mostly to grenades: fire grenades (molotovs), flashbangs, smoke grenades, decoys and of course, HEs. The usage of these items has been restricted since the original Counter-Strike, with players being able to carry up to four different utilities – one of each kind except flashbangs, which players can carry two at the same time –in competitive modes. Players can’t also drop utility in most of CSGO’s game modes, with Danger Zone being the exception.

Dropping utility

Such a change might look small if you don’t follow Counter-Strike, but its implications are huge. Allowing a player to be a dedicated “utility holder” in professional play would open various new tactical possibilities. If done right, it could even be a good feature in casual matchmaking.

In any case, CSGO’ official handle kept discussing the possibility of such changes to the game, even answering fans about it. Take a look below to see their most recent post about the topic:

Is your claim that a single CT could hold a site because they are carrying 4 smoke grenades?

One CT with 4 smokes can hold off 5 Ts with guns and utility of their own?

— CS:GO (@CSGO) July 29, 2021

In any case, the CSGO community is already deep in discussion about this possibility. Fan-favorite creator ‘3kliksphilip’ even briefly addressed the teasers on a quick video, check below:

Possible changes to the CSGO’s buy menu

Amidst all the discussion, one interesting discussion that surfaced is that CSGO might be getting a reworked buy menu – or that at least, it should be getting one.

Right now, the current buy menu lacks options to ask for weapons, or an option to buy them directly to someone else. That would be a great quality-of-life feature that doesn’t need the same kind of testing that making utility droppable by players would.

Restructuring the current buy menu in order to allow more team-oriented functions would definitely be a welcome change. While CS:GO Twitter account didn’t directly teased it, here’s hoping that such idea ships with the utility related update.

A new game mode might be headed to CSGO

This past week has been full of interesting rumors and speculations in Counter-Strike. Besides the aforementioned teases, the community also caught wind of another very interesting event that happened behind the scenes.

Picked up by a Twitter user, SteamDB, a database for all things Valve and Steam, captured one of Valve’s CSGO server running a map called surf_begginer.

SteamDB picked up a whitelisted CSGO server (basically official server) running a .bsp named surf_beginner a few days ago.
This was very likely just a mistake, but what if @CSGO would add surf as an official gamemode in the next operation like they did with retakes last year? 🤔 pic.twitter.com/Jq5FHLRWtc

— T-R3x3r (@TR3x3r) July 29, 2021

If you aren’t aware, “Surf” is a very famous game mode created by the community back in the original Counter-Strike days. It’s so popular that it’s often featured by tournament organizers during halftime as a way to entertain viewers.

It could be a simple mistake as the Twitter user points out, sure. However, considering that Valve has been bringing community-created game modes to CSGO over the past couple of years, there’s definitely some grounds to believe that Surf could be the next one mode to be officially feature in CSGO. After all, last year Valve added retakes to the game, and Flying Scoutsman has been in the game since Operation Hydra.

Perhaps, the above-mentioned utility changes will also be part of a different game mode, too. We could be seeing a custom version of CSGO’s existing competitive mode featuring different changes to the meta. This would certainly be useful in order to gather data.

CSGO might get Vulkan support – with a caveat

This piece of the rumors sheet is more focused on the technical aspect of CSGO. If you aren’t aware, CSGO still runs on the ancient DirectX 9 API, which was originally released in late 2002. Of course, CSGO’s current DX9 API is a much more recent version than the original release, but this doesn’t change the fact that it still is a deprecated API.

While there’s a discussion to be made around this topic, that is not the point of this piece. Instead, let’s focus on the current rumors of DXVK, a wrapper that translates DirectX games to Vulkan, coming to the game. While DXVK is mostly used by Linux gamers to run Windows-only games on their systems, it can also be used by Windows gamers to varied results.

Valve themselves has already made use of DXVK in two older titles of their catalog: Left 4 Dead 2 and Portal. Now, it seems that CSGO is their next game to get the feature. As spotted by SteamDB, Valve added a test branch to CSGO on Steam called ‘rvktest’. As pointed by users, rvktest could stand for Vulkan Renderer Test.

Unfortunately, as some users also pointed out, this doesn’t mean that CSGO will get a massive performance overhaul from it. Unlike DoTA 2 which got a native Vulkan renderer, CSGO would still be limited to the DirectX 9 at its core.

What can we take from these rumors?

Considering CS:GO official posts, it’s fair game to start expecting changes around utility usage to become real. Valve could bring back CSGO’s public beta branch to allow users to test it. Valve would then gather feedback and then evaluate whether it’s a viable change or not.

As for the possible new game modes, there’s plenty of reason to believe that it will be coming with a new operation – more on that in just a bit. Then, regarding Vulkan, considering its implementation, it could honestly come earlier than expected in a smaller update. We might even see it before the PGL Major, which starts in late October.

Also, if you don’t follow Counter-Strike often, you might be confused as to why a simple post like the aforementioned ‘Counter-Strike.’ one would spark so much discussion within the community. First and foremost, it’s fun. Then, Valve has a historic of becoming active on Twitter just before a big update comes around.

If you want an example of how it works, just take a look at this tweet. While it seems innocent at first, it was posted just one hour before the tenth CSGO operation dropped last year. In the same update, the ‘Retakes’ gamemode were added to the game.

When should we see CSGO next major update?

In 2019 and 2020, Valve released an Operation – limited-time events featuring community-made and Valve developed works – in the last quarter of those years. Specifically, Operation Shattered Web was released in November 19, 2019. Operation Broken Fang was revealed on December 3, 2020.

And that’s the time period when we expect the next major update to drop. Featuring a new Surf game mode with community-made maps, the Dreams & Nightmares skin collection, and the return of CSGO’s beta branch. All that alongside with typical Operation elements such a time-limited map pool, an Operation coin and such.

If you want a more specific window, we will be then taking in consideration that the Dreams & Nightmares competition. Valve announced that the contest will end on November 21. This means that an Operation featuring it could be releasing in early to mid-December at earliest.

Counter-Strike getting Source 2?! Matchmaking rework?!

Besides the rumors we’ve discussed above there’s also a few rumors and speculations that have been going since forever. More commonly, Source 2, which was “leaked” by multiple “insiders” over the years.

Unfortunately, there’s no way to predict such things. Source 2, which would mean CSGO getting a completely new engine, simply isn’t feasible at the moment. With most of Valve staff focused on preparing the Steam Deck, such a monumental work such as swapping engines of a game like CSGO simply isn’t feasible. Instead, we expect Valve to continue shipping Source 2 modules, as they call it, to CSGO. The Panorama UI, for example, is a Source 2 module working on CSGO right now.

Remaking the way matchmaking works in CSGO is another major task that would require a great deal of attention from Valve. The number of issues that could be caused for a full rework of the rankings, the math behind how CSGO calculates your skill, the formulas used to calculate your reputation, or ‘Trust Factor’ – all that would take a lot of work.

CSGO2?!

Then, regarding a whole new game, it’s also complicated. Like mentioned above, there’s a small chance that Valve have a secret slate of releases prepared for the Steam Deck. That, however is pure speculation. Valve pioneered the games-as-service format that we see so much nowadays. Differently than many other developers, though, they actually have done it in the right way. CSGO is approaching its tenth anniversary, and unless the unexpected happens, it will live for another five, perhaps ten years.

What we want to say here is – don’t expect massive changes to happen with Global Offensive right now, or ever. Valve works differently than every other developer out there. What we want to say here is that having high expectations about what could come next week or next month for your favorite Valve game usually will end with you getting disappointed.

Whether there’s a major update or not, we will be here

While it would be nice to get a major update sooner than later, as Gabe Newell once said, ‘these things, they take time’. So, while everything discussed here stays as just unconfirmed rumors, we will keep getting prepared for what’s confirmed to come. The ESL Pro League Season 14 is almost here. The first CSGO Major in over two years is also getting closer. CSGO fans have quite a lot of content ahead of them in 2021.

If you want to make sure you haven’t missed anything – then keep up with us here!