Even Counter-Strike's devs called this wonder-bug the 'Smooth Criminal' before they had to beat it
"Release notes for today are up" began the fairly typical message from the Counter-Strike 2 dev team, before things take a turn: "Shamone." The world's greatest competitive shooter has in recent days been delighting players with a bug that has been christened the "Smooth Criminal", after Michael Jackson's dance moves that accompany the song of the same name, and feature exaggerated leaning postures. In-game players have been strafing and, thanks to this glitch, would sometimes appear to glide with the top half of their body leaning out in an odd manner: no doubt a thriller for them, but plain bad and dangerous for those on the receiving end.
Here are a few examples of the bug in action, which of course players have played the song and various effects over:
bro thinks he's Michael Jackson from r/counterstrike
Michael Jackson peek ????Smooth criminal ????????: u/thekappa27#CS2 pic.twitter.com/e1W61ZNoB3October 11, 2023
Michael Jackson peek ????Smooth criminal ????#CS2 pic.twitter.com/qerO2hsT78October 11, 2023
There have also been some community tributes, such as the talented u/eliasdsdf playing along to Smooth Criminal by shooting the bells on Inferno with a silenced rifle. This thing was both very funny, and obviously a bit of an issue. Valve has quickly responded with both an update that has "fixed the "Smooth Criminal" foot pinning bug", and a new banner for the game that features a leaning Jackson-style silhouette. In response to a user saying the bug would be missed, the CS2 account responded "the banner stays".
The full patch notes follow:
- [ GAMEPLAY ]
- When a server disagrees about a player's loadout, such as when a match starts during a patch, the buy menu will now reflect the server-authoritative loadout
- Fixed a case where players could clip through ceilings
- Made adjustments to character shaders to improve player visibility
- [ ANIMATION ]
- Fixed the "Smooth Criminal" foot pinning bug
- Adjusted team select and team intro knife animations to work with Shadow Daggers
- [ MAPS ]
- Various bug fixes and tweaks to Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, Overpass, and Vertigo
- [ MISC ]
- Added "Player Color" option to "HUD Color" setting that will make the HUD match your or your spectator target's player color in competitive modes
- Changed "Use Player Colors on Team ID" default to "Yes"
- Added "Large Player Count" setting to replace player avatars with team player count in the mini-scoreboard during the active portion of rounds
- Fixed a bug where graffiti changes mid-match were delayed
- Various bug fixes and tweaks to weapon finishes and stickers
- [ WORKSHOP TOOLS ]
- New Screenshot button - captures a screenshot of the game window and saves a .png file to disk. Using "Inspect" with the gray or green backgrounds saves the .png with the UI elements hidden and a transparent background
- Added Inferno and Ancient preview maps (workshop_preview_inferno and workshop_preview_ancient)
- Workshop Item Editor - Integrated help system contains detailed guides when you see (More Help: Shift+F1) in the tool tip. These detailed guides contain important information about PBR color ranges, wear/durability masking alpha values, and much more