Counter-Strike 2 News

CS:GO's 2021 Major Championship

CS:GO’s next Major Championship will be hosted by PGL, and will take place in Stockholm at the Ericsson Globe, October 23rd-November 7th, provided it is safe to hold live competitive events by that time.

Join us in Sweden, or watch all of the matches online with the CS:GO Major’s first 4K 60fps stream!

Twenty-four teams will battle for their share of a $2,000,000 prize pool. Those teams will be identified through a series of Regional Major Ranking (RMR) events throughout the year, initially taking place online and culminating in at least one offline RMR per region prior to the Major. We’ll provide more detail about 2021 RMR events soon.

It has been a long stretch since CS:GO last crowned a Major Champion. Who will rise to the top and claim the title?

PGL confirms 2021 CS:GO major

Tournament organiser PGL has confirmed the news that Counter-Strike fans have been eagerly awaiting for months: the date of the next major.

With the pandemic cancelling 2020's planned majors and casting doubt on whether we'd get one this year at all, PGL has now announced that it will be hosting a CS:GO major in Stockholm, Sweden, between October 23 and November 7, 2021. This will be the first CS:GO major since the StarLadder Berlin tournament which concluded in September 2019. By the time PGL Stockholm comes around, fans will have waited over two years to see a top-tier CS:GO tournament.

The good news doesn't end, as PGL also reveals the Stockholm major will boast the largest prize pool ever seen for a CS:GO event at $2 million. Fans will also be excited to learn that there are plans to have a live audience inside the host city's Ericsson Globe to watch the business end of the tournament between November 4 and November 7.

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A CSGO fan has remade part of its Mirage map and it looks gorgeous

While some players might be keen to see an official remake of CS:GO map Mirage hit the FPS game one day, one fan has decided to remake one of its key locations themselves. CS:GO fan Dooodaaad has reimagined the 'B short' portion the multiplayer game's Mirage map, and it looks pretty incredible.

"While we wait for Valve to remake Mirage, I figured I'd give it a try," the creator says. "Here's what I did with catwalk!" As you can see in some before-and-after comparison shots they've posted on Imgur here, the difference is pretty astonishing. The previously minimalist street scene has been partially remodelled, with the building corner in the section's centre turned into a rustic brick shelter with decorative awning, hanging plant, and café table with chairs. There's also a scooter tucked away in the shadows.

As for the building ahead, its previously bare façade has been given a bit of an overhaul, with decorative new windows that look like those seen in Dust 2 and a gate entrance. While it looks very different from live Mirage, the creator says they "remade the basic geometry from the original level exactly," but "just decorated it differently".

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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive update for 12 January 2021

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CS:GO update removes bots from competitive matches

A new Counter-Strike: Global Offensive patch has just dropped, but away from its standard bug fixes and map tweaks, there's one change that's got the community talking - the decision to remove bots from competitive and Wingman games.

Traditionally if a player left or was kicked from a game, they would be replaced with a bot. These bots, if you could stop them from rushing B with their freshly purchased Negev, could be controlled by a player upon their death. This led to some four-man stacks kicking their solo queue teammates to take full control of the game.

This will no longer be the case anymore, though. Valve has decided to remove bots altogether in competitive modes (unless the entire team leaves the match) and while it should help curb toxicity online, it's left a pretty sour taste in the mouths of many fans grinding the CS:GO ranks.

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