Vertigo replaces Cache in the CS:GO Active Duty map pool

Valve has officially changed the competitive Active Duty for the first time in 2019.

Vertigo is taking Cache’s place in the Active Duty map pool as a bomb defusal map, keeping the Active Duty rotation at seven total maps. This means that Vertigo will be played at the next CS:GO Major in August, StarLadder Berlin, as well as at other international tournaments.

Related: OpTic Gaming’s CS:GO team acquires MSL and niko, parts ways with cajunb

Over the past few updates in 2019, Valve has been revamping Vertigo little by little in preparation for this controversial decision. Vertigo has never been played in competitive Counter-Strike, and there is no currently established meta for it at the professional level of play. With this in mind, it’s unclear when tournament organizers will decide to implement the map into play in their tournaments.

Below are the most recent changes to Vertigo in today’s update.

• Added new cover in bottom of mid, that doubles as a ramp towards “window” to B site
• Pushed up CT spawns slightly
• Prioritized spawn positions, CTs will be biased towards forward spawns, Ts biased towards rear spawns
• Added corner railing to catwalk on B site
• Blocked two-man boost on top of spools in CT spawn
• Blocked angle over wall when going down stairs from B site towards T spawn
• Tweaked T stairs up to bombsite B
• Tweaked layout of T spawn slightly
• Updated bombsite target models on sites
• Elevator shaft injuries now count towards the injury statistic
• Fixed various clipping issues

The Active Duty map pool now consists of Vertigo, Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, Overpass, and Train. Vertigo will likely be a new permaban in map vetoes for many teams at the top level, and Nuke will likely have a higher frequency of play.

A number of additions were also added to the game in this update too, including a music kit called “EZ4ENCE” and a new cosmetic sticker capsule called “Feral Predators.” The rest of the minor patch notes from this update are also shown below.

Gameplay

• Grenades will no longer go through closed doors in certain rare circumstances.
• Players can no longer pick up weapons through walls or without direct line-of-sight.

Misc.

• Fixed certain textures sometimes not rendering when running with -d3d9ex launch option.
• Fixed an issue causing certain areas to not render correctly when spectating a player with zoom-in activated.
• Fixed items removed from user’s inventory sometimes showing up in loadout and buy menu incorrectly.
• Fixed player disconnect messages to have neutral names when communication preference is set to sanitize player names.
• Added “consecutive_round_losses” value for each team to Game State Integration output.