CSGO devs working overtime as 10th operation rumors swirl

The Valve-only development version of CSGO recorded four developers online for just the fifth time ever since Steam Database started tracking the statistic in 2014.

While the rest of the world waits for CSGO’s next operation, it looks as though developers put in some serious time behind the scenes this week. In fact, a closer look shows that Valve is doing something in CSGO, and has been for some times. Thanks to SteamDB, players have a fairly good understanding of how CSGO is laid out behind the scenes.

That information allows players to understand CSGO’s development pipeline. CSGO’s Beta application ID for the Mac version of the game is 733, meaning that specific updates for Apple computers are stored there until they’re ready to be shipped. Any player who has ever had to save their own configuration file knows CSGO’s application ID by heart, 730. 

Devs have spent more time on CSGO than ever before

Valve developers have access to an exclusive experimental version of CSGO which is likely used to test new features, fixes, and additions to the shooter. There’s been an unusual amount of activity in this version of CSGO since October, including two separate instances where four CSGO developers were online in the game at the same time. That means that more developers have been working on CSGO this month than in a very long time. 

Admittedly, this might not sound like a big deal, but since SteamDB started tracking player counts for individual games in 2018 the site has only ever counted four CSGO developers online five total times. Three of those times have come in 2020.

Since rumors of a new CSGO operation started circulating in early October in anticipation of Counter-Strike 1.0’s 20th birthday, all eyes have been on Valve and CSGO, but so far fans haven’t heard a peep from CSGO in 11 days. Interestingly, CSGO’s development branch was much more quiet leading up to Shattered Web’s November 2019 release. In that time, SteamDB recorded only a handful of “players” leading up to the release of CSGO’s ninth operation.

There’s one thing that’s clear from the information players have at their disposal, and that’s the fact that CSGO devs aren’t just sitting on their hands going into the winter season. Whether it’s a 10th operation or something else entirely, Valve seems to have something brewing for CSGO fans.