New Counter-Strike 2 update punishes cheaters for an entire year

The new Counter-Strike 2 update features a heavy but smart punishment for players caught using the armor stars bug, as Valve cracks down.

Cheaters are the bane of online games, but in some cases, it almost feels worth people using bugs, exploits, and hacks just to see what ingenious punishments developers will deploy. Long-time Valve fans will remember the famous Christmas chests for Dota 2, which when opened by cheating players, contained nothing but a digital lump of coal and a message that they had been banned. Rainbow Six Siege also had a good one, where if you tried to team-kill a compadre, you’d actually end up shooting and eliminating yourself. Now, the new Counter-Strike 2 update comes down hard on anyone exploiting the recent armor stars bug. If you get your kicks from conning the entire in-game trading system, Valve is going straight for your neck.

Counter-Strike 2 armor points, otherwise referred to as stars, are an in-game currency that can only be earned if you purchase the $17 Armor Pass. Essentially, Armor Pass owners can earn the stars through regular play, then cash them in for exclusive weapon skins – the more you play, the more stars you get, and the more cosmetics you can buy. Like myriad other online FPS games, it’s a way to wear your devotion and prestige, and give yourself an extra incentive to keep scoring frags.

Recently, however, a bug in the Counter-Strike 2 matchmaking lobby has enabled some players to illicitly earn vast numbers of armor stars, undermining the rarity and value of the exclusive skins for everyone else. As well as updating CS2’s particle and lighting effects, and implementing a new team color system, whereby teams are now assigned their color before warm-up, Valve has deployed a particularly hardline punishment for anyone using the armor stars bug. A message in the latest Counter-Strike 2 patch notes makes it perfectly clear.

“Some users that exploited a bug with the matchmaking lobby system in order to obtain large amounts of armory stars were presented with the following message upon booting their game following this update: ‘Your trading privileges in Counter-Strike 2 have been suspended for exploiting bugged XP lobbies in deathmatch on official Counter-Strike 2 servers. Your trading privileges in Counter-Strike 2 will be restored on October 1, 2025.”

So basically, if you used the armor stars bug, you can’t trade for almost an entire year. It’s a positive move to keep Counter-Strike 2 fair and honest, and good to see given that Valve is also busy with all the new Deadlock updates.

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