10 years later, Counter-Strike continues to annoy players with one odd scoring decision

Counter-Strike 2 is not even out yet, but the streams and broadcasts of the beta access period have already offered fans many opportunities to get a glimpse of what is to come for the long-running first-person shooter franchise. For a series with such a storied history, certain elements, good or bad alike, have persisted for decades, and the game’s vibrant Reddit community has recently found out that a persistently annoying tidbit may very well stick around into the new game.

A Reddit thread created by user /u/ImThour showed off a screenshot displaying a well-known phenomenon where the MVP reward for the round win goes to the bomb defuser on the CT side instead of the player who got the majority of kills – four, in this particular scenario. With the screenshot taken from CS2’s beta, it seems like this contentious scoring method will stick around in the newest iteration of the franchise.

While, as one of the users mentioned, the “game mode is called defuse, not kill,” context is often important in these scenarios, and its evaluation is beyond the rudimentary capabilities of the game’s MVP system. If the round is a quick clean sweep for the defenders with ample time and many survivors around to get the defuse, then it is less of an accomplishment than earning the preceding kills. On the other hand, if a clutch or a ninja defuse was required to get the round win, then stopping the bomb is indeed the more valuable accomplishment.

As one of the commenters put it, “You retake the site, needing to kill 4 people and you continue to do so. Then a teammate casually walks in and defuse, in my mind, there is no question who is the MVP making the win possible.” While one of the responses jokingly suggests “easy, just TK and defuse” as a possible solution, it looks like this is going to be a debate that will outlast Global Offensive for fans of the franchise.