CS Legend stonewalls Valve on CS2 feedback
Over the last couple of weeks, various professional Counter-Strike players have been vocal about their issues with the new iteration of the game.
One of the most outspoken pros is Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyljev, who recently revealed that Valve reached out to him to provide feedback on the issues he sees with Counter-Strike 2. On his stream, s1mple stated that he chose to not respond to the message.
s1mple's frustration with Valve's outreach
The dialogue between s1mple and Valve originated from a tweet where s1mple advised aspiring professionals to hold off on diving into Counter-Strike 2 until updates were rolled out, sharing: "If you want to become CS2 pro you still have 3 months. Don’t play this s#!t game right now, wait for updates."
The tweet captured Valve's attention, prompting them to reach out for further feedback. Answering a question from his chat during a live stream, s1mple shared his frustration with Valve's attempt at communication.
"They wrote to me on Twitter and they sent me the tweet that I posted. [...] They asked 'What are the issues?' You know what I did? I never answered them back. How can you ask me what the issue is when the f#!king whole Internet is writing about issues. You don’t see the f#!king issue, or what?" he retorted.
His choice to leave the message on read is a controversial one, and yet, illustrates the frustration some of Counter-Strike’s professionals feel.
Mounting criticism amidst technical flaws
The discontent surrounding s1mple's frustration is deeply rooted in the recent changes brought about by Counter-Strike 2's release. An update from October 17 that addressed a workaround the community had found for a glaring gameplay inconsistency issue ticked the CS pro community off.
An inconsistency (affecting actions' execution in the game) had its roots in how the game registered inputs. Players had discovered a way to amend this by making changes in the configuration file, effectively making it read movement inputs on the very first tick of executing the command, thus reinstating the desired consistency.
However, the released update removed this workaround without solving the underlying problem. Community figures, not limited to players alone but extending to tournament organisers and shoutcasters, openly criticized Valve for this change.
Noteworthy voices include Mohan "launders" Govindasamy and Jonathan "EliGE" Jablonowski, who shared their displeasure on Twitter, accentuating the issue's impact on the game's core mechanics. ESL, a notable tournament organizer, chose not to update to the new version for their ongoing Intel Extreme Masters event in Sydney, highlighting the serious nature of the problem.
