In the sea of exploits and bugs that have surfaced with CS2‘s rocky release, some were bound to be abused at higher levels of play. One CS2 professional team has now been accused of abusing a team switch exploit to essentially spy on their opponents in the European RMR qualifiers.
CS2 fan bobinho126 called out KOI on Jan. 9, sharing a video of the team making a full rotation once 9INE reached the connector from T spawn to Mid on Ancient. “Does [the] PGL Esports major rulebook say anything about bug abuse?” the fan said in the post, further clarifying what the team had done to obtain information on the enemies’ whereabouts—a bug involving the team switch menu in CS2.
KOI had no visual or audio information to warrant a full rotation that early into the round such as the one they made. They even left the B site completely unguarded, showing they clearly had at least a hunch that the enemies were making their way for the A site. However, as bobinho126 points out, they could have heard the entire Terrorist team if they had opened the team switch menu found on CS2‘s main menu screen.
The updated version of the team switch transports the camera to a particular part of the map—with Ancient’s being the top of the T spawn to mid connector. Once up there through the menu, a player can hear footsteps, see grenades being thrown, and even see the bomb, though actual players remain invisible.
Bobinho126 claims that this is exactly what KOI did. One player would have opened the team switch menu, and they could hear the Terrorist team walking around Mid and a good portion of T spawn towards the A site. This may have been enough information to warrant a full rotation from the opposing side, but this supposed bug abuse hasn’t yet been confirmed by KOI or PGL at the time of writing.
Ultimately, KOI lost the map 13-5 but took out the series win 2-1 over 9INE, with KOI eventually completing the run to the closed qualifier despite a 13-0 loss in the final to ex-Thunderflash.
One could also argue that this isn’t a bug but a feature of CS2. And, while you may be right, it’s still an abuse of a feature’s unintended function, which is clearly an oversight by Valve who decided not to mute actual players when the team switch menu is opened. The “glitch” is present on all maps, and on Mirage (thanks @mwlkycs) especially, the menu transports players to T spawn—where players can even see where the bomb is going and which smokes are being lined up and thrown.
With the potential of being game-breaking, this “bug” should be at the top of Valve’s list of priorities. Hopefully, PGL will also clarify if abusing this feature qualifies as abuse and prevent players from further exploiting it to push matches in their favor—as has previously happened, time and time again.
Dot Esports has reached out to PGL for comment but has not received a response at the time this article was published.
