CS2’s Armory update has made the bot problem worse than ever, but not all players mind

Jingles, dongles, bish bash bosh: the Armory update to CS2 brought along a whole new type of cosmetic and a quintuple battle pass, and predictably enough, XP farmers are running rampant on the servers. Annoying? Yes—but some players have still found an upside.

There are new looks to Counter-Strike 2 right now, with the introduction of the Armory Pass giving players an all-new cosmetic type to farm for in the form of Charms, which are tiny pendants that you can attach to your weapons, ranging from tiny weapons to sausage men.

It’s odd.

Less odd, however, is the impact their inclusion—and that of the all-new battle pass, of which you can simultaneously run five—had on the community servers and the less competitive game modes, with players and bots alike looking for ways to farm as much XP in as short a time as possible—and if you’re looking to actually play the game instead, you will find yourself getting kicked from the server.

A thread on the GlobalOffensive subreddit from Oct. 4, titled, “So casual is pretty much dead now,” aptly explains the issue, with the author saying that they have ”attempted to join multiple casual matches today only to find both teams running to mid and just using utility to kill everyone. Each time I joined I went a different way and was kicked almost immediately.” A day later, players have found even more inventive ways to farm, from coordinating knife battles in Deathmatch mode to doing truly offensive things with everyone’s favorite box of bullets, the P90.

With every 10-minute round of deathmatch awarding you a fifth of your points earned in experience points—the “currency” used to level up your profile and the Armory pass—min-maxing players (and bots) have taken to the mode as a great way to farm XP, at the obvious detriment of players who are just looking to play the game.

Not everyone agrees with this assessment, though. One of the most-upvoted threads on the subreddit at the time of writing is titled “Possibly a hot take: Farming lobbies is the most fun I’ve had playing CS in years,” with the author framing the situation as “community unified and made its own gamemode and mission,” adding that “its the first time I’ve ever seen the CT and T play as one team for the duration of an entire game.”

For those grinding Premier Mode, the jingling and the swinging might be all that’s made an impact in this story so far. But for those navigating darker CS2 gaming waters, stay safe out there. You can never know for sure whether you’ll be kicked in just a few seconds.