There was a lot going on in the CS: GO world this week! Three updates came out, two pro-level teams split up, and we got three new crafts that cost over $70,000 in total! Oh, and then there was the release of Chinese Steam. More about all of this below!
Updates
The latest CS:GO updates have made the following changes to the game:
- When a player leaves a competitive match, the outnumbered team will from now on receive an additional $1000 regardless of whether they won or lost the round (previously, this only applied for a defeat in the round);
- Some changes also affect the new Premium Mode: namely, 4 short 30-seconds timeouts were replaced by two 60-seconds ones;
And a few hidden files shoutout to the channel for the info provided: the update weighs as much as 67 MB, but why? The fact of the matter is, Valve moved a pretty large number of skin textures from one folder to another. It’s this transfer that caused the update to be so weighty.
Fun fact: all of these skins were created by community members and hadn’t been changed for over 4 years. Which means: soon enough, we may see new skins developed by Valve themselves — just like in the good ol’ days.
Skins
This week, we witnessed some curious new crafts. For instance, Twitter user CP3Vesslan decided to commemorate the old Ninjas in Pyjamas logo and crafted an M4A4 Royal Paladin with a 4x streak of NiP Katowice 2014 (Holo) stickers, which cost him a total of about $4000. This M4 is one of a kind — no copies exist as of now.
Moving on to more pricey crafts! Next up is AWP The Prince with a 0.005 float and a 4x streak of Dignitas (Holo) stickers from the same 2014 Katowice Major. The craft cost roughly $26,000.
And the most interesting of the three: the other day, a Chinese player decided to apply 4 Vox Eminor (Holo) stickers on his AK-47 Wild Lotus, which is worth over $3000. As to the stickers, they cost him $40,000. We believe this majestic beauty was definitely worth the investment.
Esports
Autimatic ended his career as a professional CS: GO player. A couple of days ago, Korean organization T1 signed him as the sixth player of the Valorant lineup. His new team includes such legends of the North American CS scene as brax and skadoodle — with the latter of whom autimatic won the 2018 Major in Boston. After his departure, the organization Gen.G announced the closure of its CS: GO division.
NiP benched twist. The player’s departure was most likely owing to the lack of firepower in the lineup. The temporary replacement is ztr, a player from the NiP academy. With him on board, the team qualified for the BLAST Premier Spring Final and beat Astralis, the number one team according to HLTV and BIG. Twist has previously represented such notable organizations as GODSENT and fnatic. It’s a very big question whether he’ll be able to pursue his career further.
The Danish organization North has announced its retirement from esports. The prices of the team’s stickers from the last RMR capsule increased, on average, 3 to 4 times. After just over 4 years, the team has won 4 major tournaments, the last of which was DreamHack Masters Stockholm back in 2018. Their prime was the third position in the HLTV ranking, but lately, the guys haven’t even been part of the top 30. The recently arrived Swedish player grux never managed to play a single match for the organization.
Chinese Steam
Perfect World and Valve will launch a public beta version of Steam China on February 9. DOTA 2 and CS:GO will be the first games to operate on the new platform. To play these games, China-based players will have to register in Steam China. Both in-game inventories and experience will be preserved.
The app Steam China will be separate from the international version and only offer approved games. Current Steam accounts will work with both versions, as will games (with some exceptions).
At the time of release, China-based gamers will be able to access both the international version of Steam and Steam China without any problems. However, it remains to be seen whether the Chinese government will block access to Steam International in the future, given it offers unlicensed games.
