Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has seen some significant updates in the past few weeks since launch and we’re here to tell you what’s new.

Valve and Hidden Path have been busy. Below are release notes of two separate updates, one that went live at the end of last month, and another that went live earlier today, September 14.

The fist update (August 30) was built in accordance with fan feedback since launch and includes some of these more notable changes:

• A UI showing both team’s active weapon, player name, health, armor, etc, when spectating a 10 player match.
• X-ray vision so dead observers can see their own teammates through walls.
• A new convar “sv_competitive_official_5v5″ that allows connected spectators to see both teams in x-ray, and forces a match to display 5v5 scoreboards regardless of maxplayers setting (Allows setting maxplayers to 12 to allow spectators into a 5v5 match).

As for today’s update, you can expect a number of bug fixes and gameplay tweaks including the addition of third-person flinching. Valve has also stated their intent to start working on a revamped Elo-driven 5v5 matchmaking system

After reading, make sure to let us know in the comments below, how have you been enjoying Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and on which platform? You can catch our impressions here.

Release Notes for 9/14/2012

Gameplay

• Added third-person gunshot flinch reaction animations for all players
• Molotovs and incendiary grenades now explode in mid air if they haven’t touched the ground after a small amount of time has passed
• Molotovs and incendiary grenades now no longer throw shorter than the other grenade types
• Fixed grenades bouncing really high if you threw them straight at the ground
• Fixed grenades that don’t have a timer (like the smoke) not detonating if they found a spot to continually bounce and not touch what was considered “the ground”
• Fixed a bug in bullet penetration where a bullet would penetrate walls much thicker than intended when the first brush the bullet hit was a detail brush.
• Fixed a rare case when server reservation would not load correct map on official servers
• Flipped MP7 viewmodel fire selector from safety to full-auto

UI

• Fixed spectator glows not updating state often enough which could allow glows to show at the wrong time
• Fixed player target ID names not showing properly in some cases when observing/spectating
• Fixed the spectator UI showing in Arms Race
• Fixed player not auto observing their killer after the death camera if no bot was available to take over
• Fixed round in spectator screen not updating if you connected mid round
• If all players on a team share the same team tag, the scoreboard and spectator team names will display the players’ team name (steam group name)
• Improved rendering performance of text UI elements

Community

• Added default loading screen for direct connects and custom maps that shows loading progress
• Fixed server console say command to deliver text to all connected clients
• sv_password can now be set on community dedicated servers when they have no players connected and will be enforced.
• Matchmaking: blocking relationships do not prevent direct server joins, they only filter during matchmaking
• sv_pure: VPK files contain the necessary hashes so the dedicated servers do not need to compute them at startup but can be checked with the command “sv_pure_checkvpk”

Release Notes for 8/30/2012

Gameplay

• Adjusted footstep volume fade out and maximum audible distance to match source/1.6.
• Increased default Casual match length to 15 rounds.
• Fixed an issue that caused the AWP to zoom to the wrong level after reloading.
• Tuned flinch aimpunch values.
• Fixed a bug in the penetration code that incorrectly determined the exit spot as being not solid when it was which allowed penetrating much further than it should have.

UI

• Added x-ray vision of own teammates for dead players.
• Added new spectator UI that shows both team’s active weapon, player name, health, armor, etc, when spectating a 10 player match.
• Added a new convar “sv_competitive_official_5v5” that:
  • Forces a match to display 5v5 scoreboards regardless of maxplayers setting ( Allows setting maxplayers to 12 to allow spectators into a 5v5 match ).
  • Allows connected spectators to see both teams in x-ray.
• Added support for international characters in play with friends lobby chat.
• Fixed an issue that caused the mouse cursor to reset its mouse position when clicking on the UI when the window didn’t have focus.
• Fixed being able to open the radio menu when you were an observer.
• You can’t toggle the scoreboard in half-time now
• Fixed the scoreboard win animation firing before the scoreboard was told to come up in the end match state and was usually missed
• The countdown timer now flashes prior to the start of a match.

General

• Reduced frequency of polling server console to save CPU.
• Fixed a rare crash when applying decals.
• Significantly improved precision of dedicated server frames to match tickrate.
• Clamped dedicated server fps to match quantized tickrate.
• Fixed two exploits. One that would allow players to see out of smoke with much more clarity than players could see them if they were boosted up while inside the smoke volume. Also made the smoke a tad shorter/smaller. Two, fixed players being able to see through a few trains out of the corner of their screens on de_train and de_train_se. Thanks Volcano.
• Fixed messages in scoreboard overlapping at end match.
• To pass a vote in competitive mode, all eligible voters minus one must now vote yes

Community Servers

• Fixed cases when values of some convars set on community servers would not correctly replicate to clients.
• Game modes configuration file now specifies cfg files to exec instead of keyvalue pairs of convars to make it easier for server operators to configure their game modes. To tweak game modes it would be sufficient to provide gamemode_competitive_server.cfg and _server.cfg files for other game modes which will exec after stock cfg files.
• Linux: running srcds_run with -autoupdate will now update the server during hibernation, in addition to changelevel.
• Fixed an issue that was limiting connectivity to community servers to only 25 players.
• Deprecated mp_ggtr_rounds_per_half. Use mp_maxrounds instead.
• Changed timelimit matches to stop at round end instead of exactly when the limit expires.