CS Legend asks Gabe Newell to fix CS2: 'It's not too late'
During HLTV's annual award show, legendary Counter-Strike player Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski has called on the tactical shooter’s developer Valve to "take care" of its game.
Over the last couple of months, Counter-Strike 2 has come under fire for a lack of optimisation, polish, and various bugs which have been plaguing especially the esports scene but also the general player base.
Taking the stage
paszaBiceps briefly addresses Valve on HLTV award show.
byu/Pokharelinishan inGlobalOffensive
Each year, the Counter-Strike community website HLTV.org honours the best of the year in various categories, inviting CS royalty this time to Belgrade. Various legends of prior versions of the game congregate to honour the active competitors.
As a legend of the game, having competed from 2006 onward, becoming one of the world's best players in the first half of CS:GO's competitive lifecycle, pasha was among the greats to award the new generation. In his case, he got to present for the award of the best team of the year.
Introducing the category, he connected with the current best teams via his own history but quickly switched to the topic of greater concern, directly addressing Valve and its president, Gabe Newell.
"Valve, Counter-Strike, Mr. Gaben, please take care of our lovely game, Counter-Strike. It’s not too late," the Polish fan-favourite said in his speech. While not going into details, it can be assumed that pasha is addressing recent news in regard to the game's recent struggles as a competitive title.
What needs fixing?
Over the last couple of months, players have not been shy to offer feedback on the state of CS2. In October of last year, during IEM Syndey, the then ENCE IGL Marco "Snappi" Pfeiffer stated that "the game is in such a bad state that it’s actually hard to play it on a high level."
In the same month, vast inconsistencies with jumps and, subsequently, smokes were spotted. As players came up with a workaround via their own game configuration, Valve killed the patchwork solution without fixing the problem - causing further outrage in the community.
Most recently, the qualifiers for the first-ever CS2 Major were plagued with cheaters, severely hurting the competitive integrity of the title in the process and calling the game's anti-cheat VAC into question.
With only two months to go until PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen in mid-March, Valve has its work cut out for it to bring the game into a stable state. Prior versions of Source and Global Offensive faced similar problems early in their lifecycle.
Each gradually improved while remaining one of the most consistent esports scenes in the industry. This at least suggests that the core gameplay experience of CS is robust enough to weather this storm.
