IEM Katowice; Teams decide to play on latest CS2 update

Counter Strike 2 teams at IEM Katowice have decided to play on the latest CS2 update. Ahead of the Playoff and RMR, teams were asked for their feedback on some changes with the update by ESL.

This was done as the European RMR is set to take place next week. The teams will be fighting for a spot in the upcoming CS2 Major, and even small changes can have an effect on gameplay. After internal tests, the teams, however, decided to play on the latest update.

What’s changed in the new update?

The changes are not that drastic on the surface in the recent patch, but do change gameplay style. Smokes casting shadows while rendering or in animation has been tweaked.

Players will now be able to see character models inside smokes at a certain angle. This can create a disadvantage for people who love to push through smokes.

Another small change is the reduction in peeker’s advantage. CS2 had a major problem with this, as holding angles was putting players at a disadvantage. While it is only reduced by 16 milliseconds, it changes a lot of things on higher level lobbies.

Most of the other changes are related to bug fixes and map balance. These include geometry fixes for consistent grenade bounce and other things.

Why play when the changes might bring disadvantages?

The tournaments are going to run year long and the teams will have to play on the new patch sometime. Playing with the latest changes early on will allow them to get used to the changes. This might further turn into an advantage in the upcoming events.

The update also brought a lot of new things and various bug fixes. It is possible that the players saw a lot of things improve and decided to go ahead with the latest patch.