Opinion: CS:GO is not worth playing anymore?

[Neorii]

CS:GO is not worth playing anymore… Kind of a big statement, right? Well, bare with me, and I will explain what I mean.

Counter Strike: Global Offensive, a.k.a. CS:GO, has been around since 2012 and has been a staple for FPS games’ fans. Players have always enjoyed how fun the game was, how realistic it felt, and how you could enjoy both casual and competitive matches.

I have never been the best CS:GO player, but I did enjoy coming home from school or work and playing a few matches with friends or random players. But that started to change a couple of years back. Slowly and steadily, my passion for the game started to vanish, and today I’d like to share with you the reasons why that is. All of the things that soured this game for me are universally bad for all players, which is why I feel that CS:GO is not worth playing anymore.

The cheater problem

If you’ve played the game recently, then you already know it as well: Counter Strike: Global Offensive has some serious cheater problems, and has never been able to solve them. From wall hacks to aimbots and spinbots, you name it: you will have to face something like that constantly while playing.

Back in the day, reporting the cheaters used to be enough… and then the game became free to play. From the moment the game became free back in 2018, the cheating problem spread like wildfire, in both casual and competitive matches.

Valve even bought over 1.700 CPUs with the specific mission of doing non-stop scans, in order to catch cheaters and take action. It didn’t work out as nicely in practice as it did in theory. Still, kudos for trying.

In 2020, they tried another approach: the Trusted Launch system. The Trusted Launch’s mission is to block all external processes from being able to interact with the game, and lowering the trust factor of any player that disables that system. But it turned out to be a bust as well. The new system banned innocent players if they used so much as Spotify to listen to music, or even Discord to talk to friends.

I tried playing a couple weeks ago and I ran into cheaters in 3 out of 4 competitive matches. I actually came across a team with two cheaters in one of my games.

My noobish perspective aside, even pro players have given up playing the game. Case number one is Michael Grzesiek, a.k.a. Shroud. He didn’t have my patience and quit the game a long time ago, and at the top of his reasons for not playing CS:GO anymore is the issue of cheating.

Smurfs

How to even start… For those of you who aren’t familiar with the term, smurfing is all about creating a secondary account in games in order to play at the lower levels, against unskilled opponents. Why do people do this in the first place? Well, some players claim that it is their way to test out new strategies without harming their rank on their main account. Others use smurfs in order to rank them up fast and sell them to other players. However, the most annoying use for a smurf acount is to easily win matches against inexperienced players.

I can understand the first reason, the others not so much. I haven’t clocked in that many hours in CS:GO, but when I play the game, I like to do so against players of similar skill and not walk into a complete massacre. Which leads us to the next problem: toxicity.

Toxicity

The game is very toxic and for way too many reasons. We have people who blatantly cheat and then brag about how “superior” they are to other players, and we also have people with oversized egos… And there’s people like me: I don’t consider myself to be toxic, and I never have anything to say about other players’ moms, yet when I am facing a cheater, an obvious smurf, or a professional trash-talker, it really gets on my nerves.

I don’t act upon the rage, but when the match is over, I turn my computer off and am annoyed for the rest of the day. Which is the main reason why I no longer play CS:GO, nor do I intend to return to it, unless some miracle happens.

[Wudan]

If you have a group of people you can play with, most of the things wont even be a problem.
Get a group of friends, play faceit and everything you have mentioned will pretty much be history. (Browse community servers if you do not want to play faceit).
If you play random games like flying scout you are screwed because it is a hacker breeding ground.

[aK]

Originally posted by Originally posted by ఆ:

Originally posted by Trinity:

If you have a group of people you can play with, most of the things wont even be a problem.
Get a group of friends, play faceit and everything you have mentioned will pretty much be history. (Browse community servers if you do not want to play faceit).
If you play random games like flying scout you are screwed because it is a hacker breeding ground.

This is a great suggestion. If your team is motivated you can help each other win and get better and it might improve your outlook on the game

yeah it will eliminate the cheating problem too, why didn't anyone think of that. /s

[PatchAdams]

Those are all major issues, but for me, just as major a problem is how distorted the ranks are in North American (and probably also Australian and South African) servers, as mentioned here:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EhQBr9pTMIo

[Klauß 🍔🍻]

Originally posted by Rhea:

CS:GO is not worth playing anymore… Kind of a big statement, right?

Nah. Absolutely not. It's just you and some other people (incl. me) who quit CS:GO each week and come back some weeks later. All good.

[wsendak ⭕⃤]

Nice rant tho.

Cheaters:
If all the players who are able to use Overwatch do at least 1 case a day, cheaters would vanish more quickly. I personally did 3+ every day in the last week. Although I know overwatch is not rewarded correctly the fair amount of XP I get is noticable.

Smurfs:
This one is problematic to every game however Riot Implemented a system which could place surfs in higher rank within 4-5 games. This could be a thing valve could implement too, and I am sure they working on it somehow.

Toxicity:
Casual games in Green TF and Prime for me where there are several auto muted guys. Toxicity is not CSGO related problem; its just the internet where you could do whatever you want anonimously. Grow a thick face and move on.

[𝓥𝓪𝓬𝓲𝓿𝓲𝓽𝔂]

don't get how this should be statistically possible, but I see a cheater in the enemy team about 5x as often as one in my team. Yesterday I saw 3 or 4 across 2 games, both in the enemy team. Talking about guys who will only peek you when you look away after holding an angle for 30 seconds, instantly headshot you through a smoke or a wall without you making a sound and will perfectly nade you every round even when you change positions. Don't even get me started on the jumping headshots.

I heard there are bots who give innocent verdicts to everyone, so that could skew the bans. I haven't gotten a ban notice in years and I report the same kinds of people I used to before. Not even the spinbotters got banned through overwatch, so I don't think it's wrong.

[oxygennnnnn]

If your team is motivated you can help each other win and get better and it might improve your outlook on the game

[Bandit]

It's a personal thing, looking at the player numbers

[Toyotakiller4000]

Ye people are saying The same thing from 2017 its nice to see that this tradition is still here. ;)

[Toyotakiller4000]

We enjoy cs go thats why we still play

[HaŦŦrick ✓ 🛠 🗽]

adios !

[Neorii]

I still can't stop playing no matter how mad I get at it, it's just to addictive.

[🐠🍑]

Originally posted by Nira:

I still can't stop playing no matter how mad I get at it, it's just to addictive.

Yes its a good game

[Сааребас]

Originally posted by Nira:

I still can't stop playing no matter how mad I get at it, it's just to addictive.

Your over halve a year late...

[MAXE]

I dont care about the "Real Smurfs" thous can be defeated like any other player!

I care about the cheaters that say their smurfs to hide their cheating attempts with it..

I love Counterstrike, but i really hate cheaters with all my heart and kinda wish they would die trying !

Cool addon btw .. what if the game kills cheaters instant or turn them into a chicken with a sign on/in the butt like e.g. " Im a cheater Sorry" or some like that ? lmfao .. now that could be funny ..