Valve has been putting their shoulder to the wheel when it comes to development lately. They’ve recently added a patch with a good number of fixes to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, changing up half a dozen maps and making small balance changes to some of the weaponry.

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The map changes are most of the patch, but the weaponry changes are important to know as well. There are also a few miscellaneous changes we’ll be going over. The full patch notes are linked below, but we’ll go over the weapon changes and miscellaneous alterations here.

Starting with the assorted misc changes, Valve has made the following adjustments:

  • Compressed several textures to reduce memory consumption
  • Silenced bots’ auto-vocalizations during warmup
  • Removed ‘Guardian’ from the “Looking to Play” tab
  • Added a new launch option titled -noubershader, which is useful for users with “very old” Intel hardware to improve their framerate. However, other users are likely to experience stuttering, so only use it if you’re using dated Intel hardware.

And that’s all the changes for the misc category! The weaponry changes are as follows:

  • SG553 has had its rate of fire and accuracy reduced. Valve hopes to bring the weapon more in line with other rifles
  • AUG has had improvements to the standing accuracy while unscoped, but the scoped accuracy has been slightly reduced
  • M4A1-S has had its price reduced to $2900
  • Desert Eagle‘s accuracy has been improved while jumping, as well as lowering the time to recover accuracy after the player lands
  • The Tec-9 has had its firing inaccuracy reduced
  • Bizon has had its armor penetration buffed

Those are all the changes coming to weaponry! There aren’t many specifics, but these changes will likely have some pretty intense effects. The Bizon having its armor penetration buffed may make it a much more common weapon choice now, for example.

The Deagle having its accuracy improved while jumping is an oddly specific but certainly helpful change. Considering how powerful the pistol already was, this accuracy buff could make it appear even more often.

Of course, the rifle nerfs may alter the way they’re utilized as well. The SG553 having its rate of fire and accuracy reduced may make it to fall out of favor amongst other rifles, and the same can be said for the AUG. Lowering the scoping accuracy may cause the latter rifle to be replaced by other more accurate weaponry. Now that the Tec-9 is more accurate, it may also be popping up a bit more often.

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Either way, the changes aren’t incredibly drastic, so don’t expect it to drastically change every match you play. Hopefully your favorite weapon has gotten some buffs, and if not, maybe you’ll find better luck switching to something else!