Valve says space bar is best jump button in CSGO, but is it?

The CSGO social media team is sticking to its guns on the default settings.

The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team has revealed its preferred control scheme via social media. Valve started off with relatively normal grenade binds before things took a turn. The official CSGO account revealed it uses mouse wheel up to inspect weapon. Even more importantly, the account runner declared that space bar is the proper way to jump in CSGO.

Optimal controls are always a point of discussion in the CSGO community. Aspect ratios, mouse sensitivities, and even the jump button are hot topics of debate. Many players, especially new ones, might not find the statement from Valve weird at all. Like most other PC games, CSGO has jump bound to space bar by default. Most veteran players have taken the time to switch jump over to mouse wheel down.

Space bar. We're not animals.

— CS2 (@CounterStrike) October 25, 2021

Valve’s “We’re not animals” line could be a reference to bunny hopping. Many players use mouse wheel down to jump as a holdover from the early days of Counter-Strike. By jumping the instant they hit the floor, players could preserve momentum and move extremely quickly. Skilled bunny hoppers in 1.6 and Source would often be accused of cheating. In all fairness, they sometimes were. 

Best jump button for CSGO

While Valve considers space bar the best CSGO jump button, most experienced players would disagree. The vast majority of CSGO players use mouse wheel down to jump. 

To rebind your jump button in CSGO, you can either do so from the settings menu or change it through the developer console. Open up the command line and enter the following line.

bind mwheeldown +jump

The space bar is the default option for every new CSGO account. The use of mouse wheel down is a tradition from previous versions of Counter-Strike. In 1.6 and Source, bunny hopping was a much more powerful mechanic. The best players could turn slow tactical gunplay into something much more fast-paced. By binding jump to mouse wheel down, players could input a dozen jumps looking for the right bunny hopping timing.

There are still small reasons to bind jump to mouse wheel down. It can improve select situations like climbing Xbox on Dust 2. Bunny hopping still exists in CSGO, but it is limited in competitive servers.

Even without its original cause, the legacy of the mouse wheel jump button lives on.