One of the basic aspects of any tactical shooter game is communicating with your team, relaying what you’re seeing and setting up plays together. Unfortunately, a lot of players can’t communicate at all in CS2, as their microphones don’t work in-game.
It’s unclear when this bug started, but more players have been affected over the past month. Their microphones work perfectly outside of CS2, but for whatever reason the game doesn’t detect their voice no matter how loud they speak. Despite the numerous complaints made on Reddit, Valve has been radio silent about the microphone issue, but CS2 players have already had enough of it and are demanding a fix as fast as possible.
“Playing solo is basically not possible, I don’t want to shout throughout a whole game to be able to communicate,” one player wrote on Reddit. “I can fiddle with the audio settings in between games turning stuff off and on and then it finally works, but only for one game the very next one it’s gone again, I’ve actually stopped calling stuff, I just ping and pray now,” another player said.
One of Dot Esports’ writers has been affected by the microphone bug more than once, and found that the issue fixed itself after restarting CS2. A lot of other players, however, can’t find a workaround despite trying various solutions provided by community members.
It’s issues like the microphone bug that make part of the CS2 community complain that Valve released an unfinished game. Although Valve has been pushing updates for CS2 every week, players are already campaign for a more meaningful update instead of minor tweaks.
Until Valve deploys a fix for the microphone bug, it’s worth restarting CS2, plugging your headset directly into the motherboard without a USB hub, and enabling streamlined pushed to talk in CS2 to try make your microphone work in CS2.
