New CSGO update brings many engine changes, new translations

The most recent CSGO update was quite large considering how little it really changed.

Translations made up the majority of the update, but there were also a number of changes inside the game’s engine itself. These are difficult to track, with each change directly related to a process inside CSGO. Although this update changed 2,000 lines of code, there’s a catch. Steam Database tracks every change, whether it’s changing a capital letter to a lower case one, or whether it’s an addition of an announcement that pops up on the home screen. If the change happens on one line of code, that’s one change and it goes on to count like that from there. All in all, CSGO’s update included three warnings about crashes that users might run into.

They all relate to CSGO’s most recent feature, the Demo Index, and restart the demo with the new setting turned off. Besides that, there wasn’t much new to get excited about unless players are particularly interested in translations.

Translation files improved going back seven years

Normally, CSGO developers don’t do much translation. The work has long been the job of community members, who look through the game’s files or notice a mistake in the UI, correct them, and send the correction to Valve. It’s been a point of pride inside the CSGO community that they’re a part of the job, so to speak, but today’s update was pretty comprehensive. 

Translation updates come in all the time, with the vast majority of smaller patches turning out to be localization updates where the main English configuration that lists objects, weapons, items, and everything in between is updated with community translations. Most of the translations are for new items, like coins for the creators of Swamp and Mutiny. But many of CSGO’s recent translation updates have health with translations for things much older. 

Both in the recent update 1.37.7.0 CSGO’s previous demo update, localization files were updated going as far back as 2015 and concerned the smallest of changes, like this one that changed the capitalization of “Terrorist.” Here’s another example where the description of the Operation Payback Pass which was changed in a small way, with the deletion of a word and the capitalization of “Operation.” 

These changes are important precisely because they’re small. With Riot Games and Valorant catching up to CSGO in popularity, Valve is spending the time dotting its Is and crossing its Ts in preparation for something big. No one can be sure what exactly that big thing is except for Valve, but there have been hints made.

For more, be sure to check out our coverage of CSGO’s ongoing code changes right here.

• Valve’s sudden attention to detail might mean big things are on the way for CSGO