Valve noted that the attorney general had first reached out to the company in early 2023 where it had made similar comparisons. The studio also said that its players “don’t have to open mystery boxes” in order to play its games. “In fact, most of you don’t open any boxes at all and just play the games—because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic, there is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.”

As for the lawsuit itself, Valve has said that it has “serious concerns” about the changes the New York attorney general wants the company to make to its games. Among these changes is making loot boxes and their contents non-transferrable.

“We think the transferability of a digital game item is good for consumers—it gives a user the ability to sell or trade an old or unwanted item for something else, in the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item like a Pokemon or baseball card. NYAG proposes to take away users’ ability to transfer their digital items from Valve games. Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken away, and we refuse to do that.”

The company has also called out the attorney general’s proposal to gather “additional information” on each one of the players “on the off-chance someone in New York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of New York, such as by using a VPN.” This could lead Valve to implement invasive technologies for the purposes of this data collection, which would include age verification, despite payment processors already having age verification built into their systems.

“We respect New York’s right to determine the laws governing behavior in the state. We will of course comply if the New York legislature passes laws governing mystery boxes—something it has not done despite considering the issue a few times,” wrote the company. “Such laws would be the result of a public process, presumably with input from the industry and New York gamers. The type of commitments the NYAG demanded from Valve went far beyond what existing New York law requires and even beyond New York itself. It may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal with the NYAG, but we believed the type of deal that would satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game developers, and impacted our ability to innovate in game design.”

As for the attorney general’s comments attempting to draw correlations between video games, violence in the real world, and the effect this might have on children, Valve has said that they serve as “a distraction and a mischaracterization we’ve all heard before.” Closing things out, the company makes a note of “many studies” highlighting the “beneficial impact” that games have on their players, and that it will ultimately wait for a court’s decision on the matter rather than trying to settle with the state of New York.

“In Valve’s most popular game, the process resembles a slot machine, with an animated spinning wheel that eventually rests on a selected item. The randomly selected virtual items have no in-game functionality but can be sold online for money, with one item reportedly being sold for more than $1 million.”

The lawsuit alleges that, through this promotion, Valve has earned “billions of dollars” by luring players to engage with gambling in the hopes of winning these items.

“Illegal gambling can be harmful and lead to serious addiction problems, especially for our young people,” said James. “Valve has made billions of dollars by letting children and adults alike illegally gamble for the chance to win valuable virtual prizes. These features are addictive, harmful, and illegal, and my office is suing to stop Valve’s illegal conduct and protect New Yorkers.”

Aside from the monetary value of the items, the crux of the lawsuit seems to revolve around Valve’s use of loot boxes, which the press release compares with slot machines due to the random nature of the rewards. The nature of the loot boxes also results in some items being rarer than others, which in turn has the added effect of making them more valuable in the market.

The fact that third-party markets also exist, making it easier to liquidate money that would have otherwise remained in the Steam ecosystem, is also a major cause for concern. “Users can also connect their Valve accounts to third-party marketplaces where the virtual items can then be sold directly for cash. The [Office of the Attorney General]’s investigation found that Valve facilitates and even assists these third-party marketplaces in their operations.”

“The high value of Counter-Strike’s rare skins and the ease of liquidating items through third-party marketplaces have made Valve’s virtual items an attractive target for thieves. Valve has received hundreds of thousands of support requests from users reporting that their Steam accounts had been hacked, or that they had been tricked into transferring items to a bad actor.”

There is also a focus on how Valve’s loot boxes adversely affect children. James has noted that they can entice younger players into gambling their limited funds because the loot boxes have the potential to offer lucrative rewards.

While the press release hasn’t confirmed what kinds of damages or penalties James is seeking from Valve through this lawsuit, it has noted that she wants to “permanently stop Valve from promoting gambling features in its games,” while also divesting itself of its “ill-got gains”, and pay fines for the violation of New York’s laws.

What makes this all the more incredible is that it’s the ninth straight week that it achieved this feat, beating the free-to-play Counter-Strike 2 and Battlefield 6, which had a much larger launch in terms of sales. It even scored ahead of heavy hitters like Marvel Rivals, Helldivers 2, Rocket League, Warframe, and Baldur’s Gate 3.

While its console rankings aren’t nearly as dominant, it’s still in eighth place on PlayStation and seventh place on Xbox. Plus, you have to consider that the top five most-played games have remained relatively static since 2024.

What’s next for ARC Raiders, especially with Embark promising a roadmap “soon”? Aside from multiple new maps across a “spectrum of size,” you can apparently expect a new map condition this week in Toxic Swamps. The developer is also looking to implement bigger ARC threats, but those expecting Speranza to become a hub that players can traverse will have to wait a bit longer.

The buy menu also gets some interesting revamps, like a Dropped Weapons panel showing all the weapons dropped by your team within the buy zone. It also allows for directly picking them up. The top right indicates the minimum cash guaranteed from the next round so you can plan buying options accordingly.

The Active Duty map pool features the return of Dust 2, with Overpass removed, though several other maps, like Inferno, have seen changes. Check out the full patch notes below for more details.

Counter-Strike 2 is available for PC via Steam as a free-to-play title and has received mixed impressions from players since launch.

Release Notes for 4/25/2024

[ VIEWMODEL ]

• Adjusted viewmodel bob movement
• Added “Preferred Viewmodel Left/Right Handedness” setting
• Added “Switch Viewmodel Left/Right Hand” key binding (default: US keyboard letter H) to switch hands temporarily during gameplay
• Viewmodel position setting and left/right hand state are now networked and visible to first-person spectators.
• Deprecated “Couch” viewmodel position setting

[ HUD ]

• Added “Radar Map Alternate Zoom” setting and “Toggle Radar Zoom” key binding to toggle between zoom levels during gameplay
• Added a radar icon for the local player when free cam spectating
• Added a grenade line-up reticle that appears shortly after pulling the pin. The timing can be configured for each grenade type independently
• Changed weapon Swap text (when pointing at a dropped weapon) to always show the gameplay name of the weapon instead of any customized name it might have.
• Added a kill feed icon for “in-air” kills
• Added the scoreboard to the ESC menu
• Added an icon to indicate bots on the scoreboard

[ BUY MENU ]

• Added a “Dropped Weapons” panel, which shows (and allows the direct pickup of) weapons that have been dropped by teammates that are standing in the buy zone
• Added the minimum amount of money that a player is guaranteed to have in the next round to the buy menu title bar. (thanks, Kadomos)

[ GAMEPLAY ]

• Increased Zeus movement speed and adjusted the attack cone
• Increased Zeus kill reward from $0 to $100 ($50 in Casual)
• Increased CZ75-Auto kill reward from $100 to $300 ($150 in Casual)
• Reduced XM1014 kill reward from $900 to $600 ($300 in Casual)

[ INVENTORY ]

• Lighting adjustments in Inspect background maps
• Added Wear Category to the info tooltip in the Inspect screen
• Added gameplay name in panels that used to only show customized name. E.g., Inspect screen, inventory tile

[ MAPS ]

• Replaced Overpass with Dust 2 in the Active Duty Group, current competition map pool, and Premier matchmaking

Baggage:

• Opened roll-up doors at spawns
• Updated models for some conveyors
• Solidified stairs
• Various bug fixes

Inferno:

• Removed overhanging building at top mid
• Removed overhangs at bottom of banana
• Various map tweaks to improve player collision and readability

Overpass, Nuke, Vertigo, Mirage and Office:

• Bug and exploit fixes
• Collision and line of sight adjustments
• Minor performance improvements

[ WEAPON FINISHES ]

• AK-47 | Inheritance: Texture and mask adjustments
• USP-S | Jawbreaker: Corrected ambient occlusion texture

[ MISC ]

• Decoupled demo playback camera movement from playback speed. This allows moving the camera even if playback is paused
• Added ability to launch practice matches and workshop maps with party members
• Added Overwatch system to enable match demo review by trusted partners
• Copenhagen 2024 Major sticker capsules are on sale now -75% off
• Added ability to adjust brightness in windowed modes

The update also brings with it other workshop tools, as well as fixes and adjustments to Counter-Strike 2. For more details on the update, check out the patch notes below.

Since its official launch back in September, Counter-Strike 2 has been fairly controversial among the playerbase. A month after launch, the game had an aggregate of mixed user reviews on Steam.

Valve had also announced back in October that the game would not be making its way to macOS. The studio stated that the technological needs of the game means that it will only be available on 64-bit Windows and Linux operating systems.

Counter-Strike 2 is a free-to-play shooter out on PC. The game acts as a free upgrade over Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Patch Notes:

[ WORKSHOP ]

• Enabled uploading CS2 maps to the workshop
• Community Servers can host workshop maps
• Added paint metalness and roughness by color features to Solid Color, Hydrographic, and Spray-Paint finishes in the Item Editor
• Added option to toggle “Automatic PBR Color Correction” to all sticker types in Item Editor
• Various Item Editor help system updates including “mat_fullbright 10” to test PBR
• Various updates to workshop tools

[ GAMEPLAY ]

• Fixed a case where user commands would be ignored in poor network conditions
• Fixed a case where weapons would fire faster than intended
• Fixed a case where clients would show multiple gunshots for one actual shot
• Fixed a case where players would fail to keep their weapons between rounds of overtime
• Fixed some instances of dropped weapons falling out of the gameplay space
• In firstperson, dead players will now see their own ragdoll at the server-authoritative lag-compensated position of their demise
• Decoy grenades interact aesthetically with smoke clouds
• Smoke grenades now have a minimum fuse duration to prevent smokes from prematurely detonating if stuck in crevices
• Players now ignore individual damage events dealing less than one point of damage
• Knife attacks will now prioritize enemies and will only hit teammates if there are no enemies in range
• Knife attacks no longer predict damage effects or sounds on the client
• Knife attack immediately after switching to a knife will always deal full damage amount
• For a given map location, eye height is now consistent regardless of how the player arrived

[ MAPS ]

INFERNO

• Fixed clipping in various areas
• Fixed various microgaps
• Fixed disappearing meshes in skybox
• Removed birds that got mistaken for grenades

[ SERVERS ]

• Added sv_maxuptimelimit setting to request server shutdown after certain number of uptime hours.
• Support -sv_maxuptimelimit command line parameter to randomly select uptime limit per instance within a range, e.g. “-sv_maxuptimelimit 48-72” command line parameter will request game server instance to self-shutdown somewhere between 48 and 72 hours by issuing “sv_shutdown” command on the game server.
• Added game server startup timing log records.
• Game servers will now print global chat messages when players acknowledge newly acquired items while connected to the game server.
• Fixed a bug showing 100% packet loss immediately after connection
• Fixed a bug where scoreboard ping could get stuck at a value lower than the real ping

[ MISC ]

• Improved rendering of stickers
• Added wins and wins-needed to Competitive Play Menu map tiles
• Fixed various minor HUD bugs
• Fixed various skins and sticker bugs
• Fixed various bugs with item inspection UI
• Fixed a skinning issue with Trapper Aggressor agent’s legs
• Improved performance of player animations on client and server
• Smoke grenade canister changed to chrome material
• “Boost Player Contrast” no longer applies to dead players
• Adjusted microphone voice threshold value

Reasons for negative reviews for Counter-Strike 2 are quite varied, with many players complaining about the game’s technical issues, while others yet talking about how Valve should not have de-listed Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. There are also players calling the fact that Counter-Strike 2‘s user reviews are merged with those of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, as the title is a free upgrade over its predecessor, as dishonest.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive pro player Oleksander ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev has also gone on to warn players against picking up Counter-Strike 2, stating that players should instead give the game a few months to become better with updates down the line.

Valve also recently revealed that Counter-Strike 2 will not be coming to macOS or 32-bit Windows operating systems. The game will only be available on 64-bit Windows and Linux systems.

I can clearly tell that if you want to become CS2 pro you still have 3 months, don’t play this shit game rn, wait for updates

— Sasha (@s1mpleO) October 5, 2023

Those who play on macOS or older 32-bit operating systems will not be able to play Counter-Strike 2. They will be able to access a legacy version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive until January 1, when Valve plans on ending support for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

To alleviate concerns for players affected by the decision, Valve has stated that it will offer refunds for players who opted to buy Prime Status Upgrade, assuming they are either macOS players or can only play on a system supporting DirectX 9 or a 32-bit version of Windows.

Counter-Strike 2 was recently released on PC after spending the better part of 2023 as a closed beta title. The game acts as a free upgrade to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

As previously announced, Counter-Strike 2 is a free upgrade to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which means all items from the latter carry over into the former. Valve has, however, made changes and improvements in various areas, including all the lighting and technical upgrades of the Source 2 engine, a new skill rating system, and more.

This comes as the largest update made to Counter-Strike since the launch of Global Offensive over a decade ago, in 2012. You can download and play Counter-Strike 2 on Steam now.

“What are you doing next Wednesday?” asks the official Counter-Strike account on X.

Counter-Strike 2 is slated to shake-up the fundamentals of the popular multiplayer shooter in quite a few ways. Earlier this month, Valve revealed some details about the upcoming game, including the fact that it will feature new Competitive rules and skill ratings that will be a “precise display” of a player’s skill.

Announced back in March, Counter-Strike 2 is bringing quite a few changes to the shooter’s core gameplay as well, including making the smoke emitted by Smoke Grenades into dynamic volumetric objects that players will be able to interact with. For example, players can shoot holes through the smoke, and even dissipate the smoke temporarily by using another grenade.

Counter-Strike 2 has been in the midst of testing since its announcement, with testers being picked from the pool of active Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players.

What are you doing next Wednesday?

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) September 20, 2023

There are also Skill Groups on a per-map basis, which could allow for fairer matchmaking on maps that you’re not as good at. Match length will also become 12-round halves with overtime instead of 15 rounds.

Valve will also invite more eligible players to its ongoing Limited Test. You’ll need to have CS: GO Prime Status, played most official matches in a region where it’s available, and have an active Competitive Skill Group to get in.

Counter-Strike 2 doesn’t have a release date yet, but it’s planned to launch this Summer on PC. Stay tuned for more details in the meantime.