Counter-Strike 2 introduces the game's biggest shake-up in years: Now when reloading, you lose all the mag's remaining ammo

Counter-Strike 2 has released an update that makes one of the biggest changes in the game's modern history: and no-one saw this one coming. Valve has changed how reloading works, so that when you reload, any ammo remaining in your current magazine is lost. And players are not happy.

"When you reload in CS2, the leftover ammo in your magazine is dumped back into an essentially endless reserve supply," says Valve's blog post on the change. "And so the decision to reload has never offered significant trade-offs—in a safe position with enough time, you might reload after firing a single bullet, or half a mag, or after firing down to empty, and the rest of the round would be unaffected.

"We think the decision to reload should have higher stakes, so in today's update reloading has been redesigned. Now, when you reload, you'll drop the used magazine and discard all of its remaining ammo. Instead of 'topping off' your weapon with a few bullets, a new full magazine will be taken from the reserves whenever you reload."

There’s also now a new HUD element, a small bar under the bullet count that empties when you shoot: so it's easier to tell at a glance roughly how much ammo you've got left. You also have a new mag count.

The change comes with a bunch of buffs and nerfs to individual guns' ammo counts: ThourCS2 went through and worked out the exact numbers.

The general trend is more ammo for most rifles, with the P250, CZ75-A and R8 pistols also getting a buffed bullet count. But these go hand-in-hand with some major nerfs, and the two that immediately jump out are the AWP and M4A1-S each having 20 bullets removed. I can see the reasoning behind the AWP: it's a one-hit kill precision weapon, so if you can't kill five players with a maximum of 15 bullets maybe the issue isn't the ammo count.

But even before this reloading change the M4A1-S was one of the weapons where you had to be careful with the ammo, and can easily run out. Again you can argue it's supposed to be a precision weapon, but I suspect this is one nerf that will be reverted before too long. In total seven weapons have buffed ammo counts, 16 have lost ammo to varying degrees, and 12 guns remain unchanged.

The community reaction across Steam, X and things like the CS2 subreddit is almost universally negative, with a few brave souls putting their head above the parapet to say this might be neat, actually. But generally players are both baffled as to why Valve has made such a fundamental change to Counter-Strike's mechanics after 27 years, and demanding an immediate reversion of the change (good luck with that).

This graph of the CS2 Steam reviews over the last 24 hours kind of say it all:

"As a chronic reloader I'm terrified" says reimelcracker on the CS2 subreddit, with Kaka-carrot-cake agreeing that "we are fucked lmao." One of the few positive perspectives on the change comes from Amnizu in the same thread, who says "I'm fucked too but I love this change. Now it's more skillful and ammo conservation is actually another thing you need to learn and be aware of. Really excited to see the change in professional games."

Valve will surely be keeping a very close eye on how things play out: Counter-Strike is one of the most perfectly balanced competitive shooters ever made, and throughout its various iterations the basic core has stayed the same for a reason.

That's the headline news for this update, though there's also another significant change, and one I suspect will prove a little more popular. Valve has incorporated map guides into the first five rounds of competitive games, which will show you suggested angles for things like smoke grenades.

"We get it," says Valve. "You could learn some smokes offline, but who has the time?"

It says these new "competitive map guides are more limited than the ones you use offline, but should be enough to give you a few reminders." The feature is obviously optional and can be toggled in the pause menu, and launches with official map guides for the maps in competitive rotation: but it will also work with guides from the Steam Community Workshop.

Finally, friends can now join your custom game modes without any hassle, straight from the friends list. You simply start up a Workshop map, turn on the new "open party" option, and the game will be hosted on your PC and friends can join.

The map guides and friends stuff seem unequivocally good additions, but of course no-one's talking about them. I'll be curious to see how the new reloading mechanic feels tonight, and I suspect like many other CS2 players my muscle memory is going to get me killed an awful lot (I too am a chronic reloader, the kind that kills one player then gets taken out by his buddy because I've immediately spammed 'R').

But I welcome Valve's willingness to tinker with CS2 in such a fundamental way: it might not work, and there might have to be a U-turn. But I can also see it adding something to the game's many tactical layers, and if nothing else it's going to force some of us to unlearn bad habits. Me: it's going to force me to unlearn bad habits. The proof with this one really will be in the pudding.