On August 14, 2013, Valve shipped the update that stopped Counter-Strike from being just a shooter. The Arms Deal Update brought in decorated weapons, two cases, eight collections tied to maps, keys, trading, Steam Community Market listings and the inspect view.The community wasn't impressed. Half the forums argued that paint jobs had nothing to do with competitive CS and that Valve was messing about instead of fixing the balance. The

We promised a separate piece on Cryptids, so here it is. But we have to start with the numbers rather than the artwork.It's been almost a month since the second Call to Arms-ory was announced, and the Cryptids tag on the Workshop has pulled in roughly twenty pages of submissions. A good chunk of those are variations on the same three ideas: a silhouette in the woods, a saucer in

For three days in Paris, Counter-Strike looked the way it hasn't looked in twenty years. Sixty-four teams showed up for the Esports World Cup's open LAN qualifier to fight over just four slots into the main bracket, where 28 more were already waiting. Add it up and you get a LAN event with nearly a hundred teams in one place — one shared hall, tables shoulder to shoulder, and s1mple

No press release. No developer post. Not a line in the patch notes. But on the night of August 6, panic broke out across Chinese farming chats and X filled up with screenshots of dead accounts. That's what a CS2 ban wave usually looks like: Valve says nothing, and the scale has to be reconstructed from other people's complaints and third-party tracker counts.It was a big one. The size isn't