Fans of CS:GO have just a few hours left to wait to see what exactly Valve have been teasing for the past few days. Speculation is at fever pitch as to what the ‘new’ CS:GO game mode could be, with a battle royale mode introduction high on the list of expected changes, based mainly on the name of a few files found by one diligent Reddit user.
Initially submitted by u/DanPlaysVGames five or so months ago, this post on reddit lists a number of files added to the game in a patch released back in the summer of this year. The word ‘survival’ appears many times in the files, and obviously can be read a number of ways in terms of what the game mode might actually be, but there is no doubt survival is a big part of the battle royale Genre.
Hunger for something new
All this then went nuclear after the above tweet was posted by an official CS:GO account. How a battle royale mode would work in CS:GO is hard to fathom at this stage but there is no doubt something is on the way and a community starved of new content is straining at the leash to get at whatever it might be hidden behind the Valve curtain.
The main reason behind the battle royale speculation is the runaway success of Fortnite and PUBG in 2018. While the genre has existed for a long time now, those games and the subsequent release of Treyarch’s latest Call of Duty game, which features a battle royale mode known as Blackout, has taken the genre to new and unprecedented heights, aided in no small part by the explosive growth and subsequent fame achieve by Tyler ‘Ninja’ Blevins.
To put it in perspective, in 2018 Fortnite has been the most viewed and played game on stream platform Twitch, with Ninja also being award ‘Stream Personality of the Year’ at the Esports Awards in London. That in itself created some ire in the esports community, but the enthusiasm for battle royale games has been equally vocal, with many CSGO pros happy to spend many hours in Fortnite or PUBG.
You’ll have to wait a few more hours to find out what all the fuss is about, but after the year CSGO has had this could be the icing on the cake.
After a long time where the game was fairly stagnant, both the economy and main rifle choices on T and CT side have been shaken up in 2018, showing the devs have a new willingness to experiment with the greatest FPS ever made. That is a great sign for esports, and could also bring a swathe of new talent into the game if whatever the devs have planned for tomorrow takes off.
