Counter-Strike and toxicity; name a more iconic duo. Although it seems to be more of a problem with multiplayer games in general: PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds received infamy by having children scream racial slurs into the microphone before anyone drops, Overwatch doles out insults anyone that sounds feminine, and both League of Legends and DOTA 2 will flame you and throw your games for you simply existing in the same server.
Yet Counter-Strike is arguably a different breed than those; it holds one of the most well-established esport scenes that have ever arisen from a title, it’s undeniably popular decades after its initial release, and it’s globally celebrated and played by millions.
In spite of this, Valve is clearly struggling to offer a competent online experience for its players, despite struggling to for years. Even with the inclusion of the recent Trust System, where highly-trusted players will play with other trusted players to remove the amount of toxicity and cheating, multiple personalities still struggle valiantly to play games as they’re supposed to.
Eric Flom plays Counter-Strike almost every day on Twitch, and it’s typical to find at least two cheaters per day blatantly using scripts and hacks to receive an advantage instead of trying to learn the fundamentals of gameplay.
Now Jacob Winneche, perhaps better known as his casting handle ‘Pimp_CSGO’, has joined in on calling out Valve for the absolutely poor performance that is constantly experienced within Counter-Strike in the modern age.
For those that don’t follow Counter-Strike’s esport scene, Winneche is a rather large figure within the professional scene with in-depth insights into rounds and tactics as they happen and have been heavily involved in the scene since 2017 as an analyst.
He has a point.
Counter-Strike players have been calling for more invasive anti-cheat measures for years, and the recent attempt by Valve to limit third-party applications interacting with the executable was cracked (with a GitHub repo) within the first hour of the beta. While Valorant users are concerned about the depth of Vanguard, CS:GO players are clamoring for the precise opposite.
Yet cheating is just one point of the horrendous experience that CS:GO is devolving into; racist screams into open microphones seem to be one of the greatest pastimes for children that now have access to the free-to-play title, flaming teammates for literally anything and everything, and refusing to fight as they ‘run it down mid’ are just a few smatterings of issues that have arisen.
Valve, to their credit, continue to roll out features that they hope will make the experience more bearable, from the auto-mute functionality to trust factor, and everything in between. Yet when a title as popular as Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is competing against third-party services to offer competent matchmaking, such as ESEA and FaceIt, it’s difficult to be amicable towards the PC juggernaut.