UpdatesOct 10, 20265 min readCS2Sell

CS2 "Guns, Guides, and Games" update (March 2026): magazine reloads and map guides in Competitive

Valve's March 18, 2026 update made every reload discard the old magazine, allowed limited map guides in Competitive and Retakes, and let friends join custom games on Workshop maps.

On March 18, 2026, Valve released "Guns, Guides, and Games", an update that changed how reloading works. Reloading a magazine-fed weapon now throws away whatever is left in the magazine, and Valve retuned each weapon's reserve to match. The same update allowed limited map guides in Competitive and Retakes matches and made it possible to join friends in custom games on Workshop maps. It added no new items.

What the update changed

Area	Change
Reloading	Leftover ammo is discarded and a full magazine comes from the reserve
Ammo display	Reserve shown as magazines, shells or bullets, with the current fill level under the ammo count
Reserve ammo	Spare magazine counts tuned weapon by weapon
Map guides	Limited guides in Competitive and Retakes for the first five rounds of each half
Workshop maps	Friends can join your Practice or Workshop game through the friends menu

How reloading works now

Valve's announcement described the old system plainly: when you reloaded, "the leftover ammo in your magazine is dumped back into an essentially endless reserve supply". In practice, reloading after a single shot cost you nothing but time.

That is gone. In Valve's words, "you'll drop the used magazine and discard all of its remaining ammo", and a new full magazine is taken from the reserve instead of topping off the old one. If you fire three shots from a 30-round AK-47 magazine and reload, the other 27 rounds are lost for the round.

The release notes added two display changes. Depending on the weapon, the reserve is now shown as a number of magazines, shells or bullets. The fill level of the magazine in your gun appears below the ammo count, so you can see how much you would throw away before pressing reload.

Reserve ammo per weapon

Valve's notes only said "Tuned reserve magazine counts per-weapon". The announcement explained the idea: "Most have gotten a three clips fill-up", while some weapons got fewer "to reward efficiency and precision" and others more "to encourage spamming through walls and smokes".

HLTV reported that the AK-47 and M4A1-S carry three spare magazines, the M4A4 four and the AWP only two, which HLTV put at 15 possible shots per round. Valve didn't publish a full list, but community comparisons collected by the Counter-Strike Wiki and TalkEsport agree on how each weapon's total reserve changed:

More reserve ammo: Galil AR (+50 rounds), M4A4 (+30), P250 (+13), CZ75-Auto (+12), FAMAS (+10), PP-Bizon (+8), R8 Revolver (+8)
Less reserve ammo: SSG 08 (−70), Dual Berettas, Five-SeveN, Glock-18 and MP9 (−60 each), G3SG1 and SCAR-20 (−50 each), Tec-9 (−36), MP5-SD and MP7 (−30 each), UMP-45 (−25), AWP and M4A1-S (−20 each), MAG-7 (−17), Desert Eagle (−14), MAC-10 (−10)

These figures come from community comparisons of ammo counts before and after the patch, not from Valve, so check the in-game count for the weapon you use.

Skins for three weapons that gained reserve ammo in the March 2026 reload update

Skins for three weapons whose reserve ammo went down

Map guides in Competitive and Retakes

Map guides are sets of in-game markers, called nodes, that show things like grenade line-ups. They started small. On November 13, 2024 Valve added a guide for Train with four Terrorist line-ups, usable in Practice mode. In December 2024 guides came to the Steam Workshop, and on January 21, 2026 they could be loaded in online Casual and Retakes games.

This update took them into Competitive. Limited guides now work in Competitive and Retakes during the first five rounds of each half, with a cap of 30 nodes. Valve called them "more limited than the ones you use offline, but should be enough to give you a few reminders". You switch one on from the pause menu. Valve added minimal starter guides for every Active Duty map, and you can subscribe to others on the Workshop.

Two new server settings control this. sv_allow_annotations_access_level takes 0 for disabled, 1 for limited view and 2 for full and editable. sv_annotation_limits_max_rounds_per_half sets how many rounds into each half guides are allowed: 5 by default, or -1 for no limit.

Valve kept the official guides up to date afterwards. On April 24, 2026 it adjusted them to match the new surface smoothing that came with Animgraph 2, and on May 7 it fixed Ancient's guides not loading on the night version of the map.

Joining friends in custom games

Since September 2025, map makers have had cs_script, a JavaScript-based scripting system for Counter-Strike maps. Valve's announcement noted that the community had been "hard at work building custom game modes using special scripting tools", and this update made those games easier to share.

Now, if you are playing a custom game, whether on a community server or hosted on your own machine, friends can join you straight from the Friends list, as long as the server allows it. To host one yourself, go to the Workshop Maps tab in the Play menu and turn on "Open Party". Starting a Workshop map then hosts a game on your PC that friends can join. The release notes describe the same thing for Practice maps.

Where it stands now

Valve's later notes haven't reversed the magazine system. Reloading kept changing, though. On September 22, 2026, the Rush update added silent reloads, done by holding the reload key at the cost of a much slower reload, and on October 8 Valve cut the AUG's reload time by half a second.

The previous update covered here is the Dead Hand Collection from a week earlier. The next big change was Animgraph 2 and the return of Cache in April 2026.