This is how to complete all of CSGO’s Steam achievements

By Nick Johnson

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Jan 5, 2021

Reading time: 5 min

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has four achievements that are impossible to get unless players know this handy trick.

CSGO has a massive 167 different achievements for players to chase. Some ask little of players, like winning ten rounds for “Newb World Order.” Others can require 1,000 hours to complete, like inflicting 1,000,000 points of damage for the game’s famous “A Million Points of Blight.” That said, even those can be accomplished with enough time and effort from a dedicated CSGO player.

But Global Offensive has four achievements that are technically unobtainable. Three of them ask players to win rounds on maps that are no longer included with CSGO: Shorttrain, Dust, and Aztec. The fourth locked achievement is called “A World of Pane” and asks players to shoot out 14 windows while playing on cs_office, one of CSGO’s hostage maps, which is impossible to complete due to a tracking issue with the level’s new textures.

How to unlock CSGO’s impossible achievements

These “final four” CSGO achievements technically aren’t possible in default matchmaking, but can be done with a bit of extra legwork. This guide will explain how players can get all of them with a little bit of tinkering inside CSGO’s folders and some help from the official CSGO Steam Workshop. It’s easy to disable once players are done and is completely safe to use.

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The four achievements that players will be able to unlock are “A World of Pane,” “Shorttrain Map Veteran,” “Dust Map Veteran,” and “Aztec Map Veteran.” This guide won’t cover the other methods of farming CSGO’s harder achievements, but the CSGO workshop is full of maps specifically designed to let players quickly get achievements.

Step 1: Download the original maps from CSGO’s Official Workshop

Valve has its own CSGO Workshop account where it keeps copies of all of the game’s official maps, so that’s where players should start. Clicking the link will bring users to a list of CSGO’s official maps. From there, players will need to download Aztec, Shorttrain, Dust, and a specific version of Office. Users can find direct links to the official maps below.

The official account has been known to remove maps from its master list, so the following link is to a public download on Github where the maps are hosted.

Step 2: Using the CSGO Workshop versions to unlock CSGO achievements

Once users have downloaded the maps, they’ll need to navigate to their CSGO directory inside their Steam Library folder. This is most commonly found by opening the following folders:

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Once there, users can simply search for the maps and copy them to a folder or desktop. Since cs_office is the only map still available in game, users will only need to back up that map so they can replace it when they’re finished. De_dust.bsp, de_aztec.bsp, and de_shorttrain.bsp are CSGO map files, and they should be moved one level up from the CSGO workshop folder into the game’s main maps folder.

For cs_office, users can copy the cs_office.bsp from CSGO’s maps folder and stash it away on their desktop so they can put it back later after they’ve done the achievement. Users may also need to rename the maps so that the look like the following. 

  • “de_mapname.bsp” for Aztec, Shorttrain, and Dust
  • “cs_office.bsp” for Office

The maps should come named this way already, but if they aren’t, now is the time to change them. CSGO’s achievements only look at the name of the map when checking the achievements, so if they aren’t named like the original maps, any work players put in won’t count.

Using the public Github link to download CSGO’s achievement maps

This is arguably easier than trying to find the official CSGO maps inside the numbered workshop folders. All users need to do is follow the link and click on “Releases” on the right-hand side. This will download a .zip file containing all four maps. Users should then right-click the zip file, extract to their desktop, and drag the maps into their CSGO maps folder following the same process as above.

Remember to take cs_office out of the “maps” folder first!

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Step 3: Starting the maps and getting the CSGO achievements

Once the maps are safely inside the “maps” folder, players can close File Explorer, sign into Steam, and start CSGO. Enable the console by searching for “Enable Developer Console” in CSGO’s settings menu and switching it on if it isn’t already. Players can then launch the maps by opening the console and entering “map de_aztec”, “map de_dust”, “map de_shorttrain”, or “map cs_office”.

The three defusal maps only require players to win rounds in the default gamemode, and they can check their progress by looking at their Steam achievements. Office is by far the easiest map to start with, as players can grab the achievement in the first round.

Step 4: Complete CSGO’s broken achievements

Players need to shoot out 14 windows for the “A World of Pane” achievement. After they finish up on Office, it’s recommended that users quit out of CSGO, sign out of Steam, and replace the old version of cs_office with the current one placed on their desktop.

For the other three, players will still have to win 100 rounds on each of the maps, and since they aren’t available in CSGO’s online modes, they’ll have to do it offline against bots. But “achieving the achievements”  is a nice way to get familiar with some of Counter-Strike’s classic maps, and at the end they’ll be able to say they got their achievements legitimately.

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While Valve may eventually fix “A World of Pane” and reintroduce the three maps players need to get the achievements, some CSGO fans have been waiting a long time to complete their list. This is by far the easiest way to finish CSGO’s toughest achievements, but there’s no harm in waiting for Valve. If CSGO’s developer fixes the achievements, they’ll be much easier to earn. But there’s no telling when or even if that will happen, so until then, this method is the tried and true way.

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