CSGO accuracy bug may ruin your aim when moving into a crouch

M Alzamora Published 30/01/2021

A Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player has revealed what might be a long-standing CSGO bug that can cause players to miss shots when moving between walking upright and crouching.

Weapon accuracy is a big piece of the CSGO puzzle, and it’s something that players spend hours practicing. But a post on social media platform Reddit makes it looks like CSGO may have been fighting its players every step of the way. The post showcased a bug where weapons would suddenly become inaccurate for a split second after players started to crouch while walking. The inaccuracy doesn’t last long, but it sticks around just long enough to cause any bullets fired while the player moves between the two states to be off target.

CSGO bug causes accuracy problems when crouching

In a game where a single bullet can end a round, that split second can be very important. Many CSGO veterans are familiar with holding off on moving into a crouch too early during firefights, realizing that they hit more shots if they came to a full stop first. This may be why.

WIN.gg testing showed that every one of CSGO’s weapons had a period of inaccuracy between when the player pressed the crouch button and the time that they actually crouched. To demonstrate this, we first recorded the values for a player’s inaccuracy, spread, spread distance, and velocity for both walking and crouch walking to establish a baseline. The numbers came out the same when recorded while holding crouch and moving forward, and when holding the walk button and standing.

But data taken during the animation of a player moving between the standing pose and a crouch while moving forward at a walking speed showed a spike in inaccuracy, even though the player’s movement speed still decreased at a steady rate.

About 30 lines of these values have been removed to increase readability:

It was also detailed that a section in last year’s leaked CSGO Source code might have been causing the odd loss in accuracy. But so far Valve hasn’t talked about the bug that has potentially cost CSGO’s die-hard players millions of duels.

CSGO is a tough game, but players are usually okay with difficulty as long as they can master it. But the bug doesn’t make much sense, even with a host of players attempting to explain it away. With player velocity moving at a steady rate when compared to other values, these errant interaction don’t seem like a purposeful feature.

Players probably should be be able to land more shots when moving into a crouch than they can while walking upright. But right now, that’s exactly the opposite of how things are working.

M Alzamora

About M Alzamora

There are few things that writer M Alzamora loves more in life than Pokemon. And there are even fewer things that she loves more than her favorite Pokemon, Eevee. But M’s appreciation for gaming isn’t just limited to Nintendo’s famous pocket monsters. She’s interested in every type of game across every genre of gaming, and she has the credentials to prove it. M’s work has also been seen on Working Classicists and gaming sites.

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