Valve bans bugged XP lobby exploiters

Valve released a small update for Counter-Strike 2 earlier today and with the update they seem to have addressed an issue that has plagued the in-game deathmatch servers since the Armory update. The Armory pass requires players to stack XP from Valve's servers in order to gain stars and redeem items from the Armory pass.

A bugged server was launched by some members of the community where a deathmatch configuration (Score x 0.5XP) would load but end with the XP convertion rate of casual (Score x 4 XP), allowing players to farm up to 60 stars in under 30 minutes. These bugged through the cheat engine or in-game tools, were invite only and exclusive to high profile streamers and their friends.

However, Valve stepped in and hammered all accounts that exploited this bug with a 1 year trade ban. As of now, many Counter-Strike 2 content creators including Anomaly, Arrow, Epidemic and FURIOUS have received a 1 year trade ban with a yellow account alert header lurking at the top of the screen in-game.

The update also slightly modified particle effects such as tracers to allow better optimization in low graphics settings and brought a lighting change across maps in it's compilation state. Player colors are now accurately represented in Premier's pick/ban phase and warmup. Here are Valve's release notes for the update:

GRAPHICS

• Fixed certain particle effects, like tracers, to fall back to mixed resolution for better performance when using low graphics settings with MSAA disabled.

• Improved lighting artifacts in various interior places when compiling maps.

MISC

• Teammate colors will now be assigned on official servers as soon as all players press ACCEPT. This will ensure that colors are correct during Pick/Ban phase, and during Warmup.

• Improvements in Charms reactivity physics system to better align with weapon animations.