Editing CS:GO Loot Box X-Ray System Explained

<br>It's currently unclear why Valve moved forward with these changes in France, in particular. So far France has not enacted any new regulations to account for loot boxes in video games, though French courts did recently rule that Steam has to allow users to resell their digital games . In 2018, the French online gambling regulatory body even assessed that loot boxes were not gambling under the country's current regulation. Perhaps Valve is using France as a testing bed or perhaps the decision is intended to shift discourse within the country or Europe. Either way, Valve certainly appears to be taking steps to protect the profits it receives from loot boxes amid the growing international controve<br><br> <br>CS:GO is a staple title in the competitive shooting scene, but like any long-running game, the game's standard levels eventually wear thin. Modders help keep the game fresh for casual play by injecting extra mechanics, weapons, models, and arenas into the popular tactical shooter. Homage maps that port settings from other titles into the game are especially popu<br><br> <br>In what appears to be bizarre effort to avoid oversight for its loot boxes, the developers of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have added a controversial new feature. The new feature is exclusive to France, where lawmakers are currently evaluating new regulations regarding loot boxes and gambling in video games. The feature, in an extremely limited fashion, allows players to look inside of a loot box prior to spending money to unlock it. And Valve clearly believes it will help CS:GO avoid additional scrut<br><br> <br>A new CS:GO patch details the removal of bots that would otherwise replace players who are disconnected or kicked out of "classic competitive and wingman modes." Whenever an entire team leaves any given match, they will now be replaced by a single bot that idles in the team's original spawn location. However, they still appear in Warmup arenas, as patch notes posted to the official Counter-Strike Blog outline a fix to bot navigation in this part of the g<br><br> <br>Counter-Strike players have often found creative means of using the game's community map aspect with some CS:GO players recreating popular locations from franchises like The Witcher . Now, a Finnish newspaper called Helsingin Sanomat is using the same feature to share details about the war in Ukraine among Russian gamers owing to the title's popularity within the community. A custom-made map dubbed "de_voyna," a fictionalized Slavic city, was released today that aims to echo some of the cities that have been destroyed over the course of the war. More interestingly, the map contains images and voice recordings captured by the newspaper's journalists on the ground situation, all of which players can interact with in-g<br><br> <br>As if that isn't frustrating enough, Valve has apparently "preloaded" the X-Ray Scanner with an item already. Meaning that players will have to purchase this item, regardless of whether they want it, in order to use the X-Ray Scanner on a loot box. The X-Ray Scanner may appear to be beneficial to players, but ultimately is just another effort at encouraging players to begin purchasing microtransactions . There's little reason to believe it's significantly beneficial over<br><br> <br>Here's how the full feature technically works. In CS:GO , players are able to either earn loot boxes through gameplay or buy them from other players. However, these loot boxes can only be opened by paying for a key. The new feature is called the X-Ray Scanner and allows players to place one loot box into it to reveal the item inside. However, and here's the trick, once an item has been scanned by the X-Ray Scanner, players will have "claim" the item buy purchasing a key to unlock it before being able to look inside another loot <br><br> <br>One community-made Counter-Strike: Global Offensive map is seemingly offering Russians an alternative view of the war in Ukraine. While Valve's [https://counterstrike2zone.com/ counter-strike 2 beginner guide|https://counterstrike2zone.com/] has been among the most popular live-service titles to date, the game is currently seeing a notable uptick in interest thanks to the recent reveal that Counter-Strike 2 is officially in the works . Now, it appears one community is looking to leverage this popularity to shed light on the situation in Ukra<br><br> <br>The map creator, ZelezoBeton, notes that the map is not a perfect, 1:1 replica, but a specific transformation made with CS:GO in mind. The map requires the Trouble in Terrorist Town plugin to run, which is an alternate game mode where terrorist forces have secret traitors seeded in their ranks. Despite this requirement, the map supports the standard, classic multiplayer modes as well as other custom modes. The map will likely never be featured in official competitive play, but it seems to stack up solidly against CS:GO 's official roster of ma<br> <br>In order to further contain CS:GO 's French marketplace, perhaps to avoid market manipulation through the use of X-Ray Scanners, Valve is making one additional change. Loot boxes can no longer be purchased from the Steam Community Market in France. All CS:GO players in the country will have to earn their own loot boxes. Though, naturally, Valve will still allow those players to sell their loot boxes to those in other countr<br>