It has not been a strong few weeks for the CS:GO dev team. I reported on Friday that the Winter Update's maligned R8 revolver had been nerfed after only three days—obscene stopping power and pinpoint accuracy for its price had effectively killed eco rounds. Now, Valve has rolled back the accompanying tweaks to pistols and rifles, stating "we likely changed too much too quickly".
For rifles, the changes boiled down to decreasing accuracy, and the latest CS:GO blog post details the rationale behind them: Valve was hoping to make spraying less appealing compared with burst fire. Instead, the patch made all forms of fire less accurate and people kept on spraying anyway, penalising the minority who do tap fire.
A full roll-back is a spectacular step down for a company running a competitive game, and the saga has left many wondering (not for the first time) why Valve doesn't run larger trials before foisting changes on the whole population. This time, the magnitude of the misstep has clearly sunk in.
"We failed to anticipate the reaction of the community to changes in such heavy-use weapons," the blog reads, "and we clearly need to re-evaluate our process for making and communicating about changes in that space."
It's becoming a common refrain from Valve, but perhaps the latest uproar will prevent drastic changes from appearing out of the blue in future.
