Pointless Twitter beef is pointless no more, as less-than 24 hours before the start of a Valve Major, the company has made changes to the way the game works based on some arguments on social media. A disagreement that began with MIBR player Epitácio ‘TACO’ de Melo Pessoa Filho tweeting at the official CSGO account seems to have solved a problem with smokes that has existed for years, according to some players of the greatest FPS ever made.
As you can see, along with his right to wear a hat, the thing that really ground TACO’s gears up until last night was a radar exploit being used by much of the scene that allowed players to see an opponent ‘through’ a smoke before it had fully faded. Astralis were the most famous users of the bug, as FaZe’s NiKo pointed out a while back, but it was being used by many teams up and down the ladder, as well as a fair few FPL wannabees.
That alone should demonstrate that the exploit was not in itself gamebreaking for Astralis, as the likes of JW and even Loba were open in admitting they knew and exploited the slight advantage they could gain. Even so, it did appear to be somewhat secret knowledge for some players, including NBK, who tweeted that he’d literally only found out it existed due to the Twitter spat between two other players.
CSGO devs' quick fix
However, on this occasion, the CSGO developers were quick to intervene, dropping an update a few hours later that they say fixes the problem. Initial tests suggests the player will now show up a touch late, rather than early if anything, but until we’ve seen this used by top pros it’s impossible to know if it really has solved the problem. With the history of patching Valve have, there is probably at least a 25% chance they made it worse, and introduced bullet magnetism through smokes by accident, but they deserve credit for their swift response, which can be found below.
With the Major due to start today, we will also get a perfect sample to see how much Astralis were relying on this exploit in clutch situations, although the Danes do have a few days before they open their account. If Xyp9x suddenly turns into Zeus in the clutch, you know that Danish excellence is a myth built on radar settings alone, but somehow we think that probably won’t be the case, and it’ll still be about who can match the world number ones over the course of the three weeks.
