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CSGO player numbers reach new high

According to official steam stats, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hit an all-time high of one million concurrent players last month. This spike in player growth is partly owing to the global pandemic that has held the world captive.

Millions of people are required to stay at home to stop the spread of the deadly virus and flatten the curve. Due to this, many have turned to games as a form of entertainment.

In any case, there is no doubt that a lot of people are thrilled with Counter-Strike, especially CSGO matches.

Fnatic reaches number 1 on CSGO rankings

In a crazy turn of events, British-based esports organised Fnatic acquired the number 1 spot on HLTV’s CSGO global rankings. It marked the first time in 4 years that team Fnatic reached the number 1 spot.

They reached the leading position, beating out team Astralis and team NaVi as they jumped from number three to number one.

Seeing as Fnatic is currently participating in the ESL One Road to Rio event, their top spot was subject to change. And at the time of writing, Astralis overtook them at number one again.

Counter-Strike’s match fixing scandal

In other news, last Sunday, five people were charged with fixing CSGO matches. The Victoria Police Media Unit explained that players were allegedly arranging to throw games, and subsequently placing bets on those matches.

This occurrence is not the first scandalous case of match-fixing as regards to CSGO – or esports in general. Many fans of the game would remember how Valve had to ban players back in 2015 because of match-fixing behavior. However, this time around, it appears that the consequences would be quite severe. Each of the Australian suspects were charged with “use of corrupt conduct information for betting purposes.”

If convicted, the suspects could face up to ten years in prison. The suspects are expected in court on September 15th.

CSGO patch update

The most recent CSGO patch went live earlier this week. This patch comes with noticeable gameplay and user interface changes as well as changes in the most recent map, Chlorine. The kill feed icons have also been updated.

Some noteworthy changes are:

The addition of the 1v1 warmup area for Wingman mode on inferno
The addition of kill feed icons for kills through smoke, no scope sniper kills, and blind shooter kills
Player immunity has been disabled in the 1v1 Wingman warmup period arenas
UI changes have been made to cater to bugs involving the crosshairs
The ability to purchase coupons from the steam store has been added
Some minor bugs have been fixed, and the radar image for the Chlorine map has been updated
Some ambient light adjustments, as well as general gameplay optimization, have been added

With ongoing CSGO tournaments, such as ESL One, fans are being granted a host of exciting content, especially during this stay-at-home period.

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