Valve acknowledges Counter-Strike: Global Offensive hitbox bug, but no ETA on fix

By Kris Wouk May 22, 2015

Counter Strike: Global Offensive player aiming down sights of a gun. — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Games are supposed to be fun, but there are some games that people take seriously. Many of the people who play Counter-Strike: Global Offensive — a.k.a., CSGO — take it very seriously. And when things don’t work they way they’re supposed to, those people get mad.

Recently a video surfaced that showed a player firing directly at an enemy, who remained completely unaffected by the entire affair. The video in question made its way around the web, shining a new light on a long-standing issue in CSGO: the hitboxes — invisible areas on character models used to determine damage.

On one Reddit thread discussing the issue, Valve employee Matt Wood responded, albeit in relatively terse fashion: “It’s being worked on. We don’t have an eta.” At least this confirms that Valve is aware of the issue.

While the video showed a glaring example, this hitbox issue has been present in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive since the game first launched in 2012. Players frequently find themselves firing multiple well-aimed shots, only to see the other player walk away without a scratch.

While these sorts of problems can be annoying in any games, they are more of an issue in CSGO due to its large eSports community. Teams compete for large sums of money, so when these game-related issues can cause a reversal in a team’s fortunes, either way, people are going to be upset.

It might seem like fixing the hitbox detection in CSGO would be a simple matter, but the fact that the problem has been known for so long without being fixed could point to it being not with the game itself, but with Valve’s Source engine. If that’s the case, players could be in for a long wait.

Considering the lack of an ETA on a fix, it seems that for the time being players will either need to avoid the game completely, or just accept the bug and play anyway.

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Kris Wouk is a tech writer, gadget reviewer, blogger, and whatever it's called when someone makes videos for the web. In his…

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