On August 19, 2024 Valve published "Side-stepping Skill", a short post that drew a line under keyboard features and scripts that automate movement. The release notes the same day made CS2 detect hardware-assisted counter-strafing on Valve servers, switched off binds that combine several actions, and started testing VacNet 3.0. On August 20 the Masterminds 2 Music Kit Box went on sale.
What changed that week
| Date | Change |
|---|---|
| Aug 19, 2024 | Hardware-assisted counter-strafing detected on Valve official servers, with a kick from the match |
| Aug 19, 2024 | Binds that combine more than one movement or attack command ignored by default |
| Aug 19, 2024 | The jump-throw confirmation grunt made audible to nearby players |
| Aug 19, 2024 | Initial testing of VacNet 3.0 on a limited set of matches |
| Aug 20, 2024 | Masterminds 2 Music Kit Box released in standard and StatTrak versions |
What Snap Tap is
Moving makes your shots inaccurate in Counter-Strike, so players stop by briefly pressing the opposite direction key, which is called counter-strafing. Doing it at exactly the right moment is a skill.
Snap Tap is Razer's name for a keyboard mode that takes part of that skill away. When two opposing keys are held, the keyboard registers only the one pressed last. Engadget's example: moving left with A, you can press D without letting go of A and go right instantly. The general term is SOCD, for simultaneous opposing cardinal directions.
According to The Verge, Razer added the feature to its Huntsman V3 Pro keyboards in July 2024, and Wooting followed with its own version, Snappy Tappy. Players could already do something similar in software with null binds, a script that cancels one direction key when you press the other. A Wooting representative told Dexerto that "Snap Tap is the same as a null bind but built into hardware."
Valve's new rule
Valve's post was direct: "Recently, some hardware features have blurred the line between manual input and automation, so we've decided to draw a clear line on what is or isn't acceptable in Counter-Strike." It said players "suspected of automating multiple player actions from a single game input may be kicked from their match", initially only on Valve official servers, and told owners of keyboards with a "Snap Tap Mode" to switch it off before joining a match.
The Verge tested an SOCD keyboard that morning and confirmed a kick from the match, but no account ban. Both Razer and Wooting accepted the decision in posts on X, Engadget reported, and Wooting called on owners of SOCD keyboards to switch the feature off while playing CS2.
Binds that stopped working
To prevent accidental kicks, Valve also disabled the scripts that do this in software. Any bind that includes more than one of the following commands is now ignored by default: sprint, reload, attack, attack2, turnleft, turnright, turnup, turndown, forward, back, left, right, moveup, movedown, klook, use, jump, duck, strafe, zoom, yaw, pitch, forwardback and rightleft.
That covers the two examples Valve named in its post, null binds and jump-throw binds. Support can be turned back on with cl_allow_multi_input_binds 1, but Valve made that setting cheat-protected.
Jump-throws without a bind
Valve didn't ban the jump-throw itself. Its post said jump-throws had "gained acceptance" and that it had "done the work to make them reliable without any special scripting or binds (i.e., by jumping and quickly throwing a grenade)."
CS2 has played a sound for a correctly timed jump-throw since the Limited Test: the March 30, 2023 notes added a "dedicated player-only sound". From August 19, 2024 that confirmation grunt could also be heard by other players nearby.
VacNet 3.0
The same notes said initial testing of VacNet 3.0 had begun on a limited set of matches. Valve asked anyone who believed their match had been cancelled by mistake to email the match details to its team. The notes gave no further detail.
The Masterminds 2 Music Kit Box
On August 20, 2024 Valve released the Masterminds 2 Music Kit Box, "available for purchase in standard and StatTrak versions". Opening one gives you one of eight High Grade kits:
- Austin Wintory, The Devil Went Clubbing in Georgia
- Ben Bromfield, Rabbit Hole
- Daniel Sadowski, Dead Shot
- Dren McDonald, Coffee! Kofe! Kahveh!
- Matt Levine, Agency
- Sam Marshall, Clutch
- Tim Huling, Devil's Paintbrush
- Tree Adams, Seventh Moon
The composers' press release, dated August 19, 2024, presents it as the follow-up to the original Masterminds Music Kit Box from 2020, and all eight composers also had a kit in that first box. Tree Adams and Ben Bromfield, who shared one kit last time (M.U.D.D. FORCE), each have their own now, and the release calls Sam Marshall's Clutch "the unsanctioned sequel" to his first kit, Bodacious.
A StatTrak kit counts the MVPs you earn while it is equipped, and standard and StatTrak versions are separate items. Our guide to music kits, graffiti and pins explains how kits work.
Other fixes that week
- August 20: fixed garbled audio when the game ran on efficiency CPU cores, and reduced stutter at the end of a round.
- August 21: map fixes, including C4 stuck spots on Nuke, Mirage, Inferno and Anubis, smoother movement around the van on Mirage, and missing handrail collision on Overpass.
- August 22: fixed a case where the radar background and its icons were misaligned.
Where it stands now
Valve later made the same detection available to other servers. On September 9, 2024 it added counter-strafe automation detection options for non-Valve servers, a family of settings named sv_auto_cstrafe. In January 2025 it made counter-strafe summaries available in game server log data as well as console logs.
Jump-throws have kept getting attention. In November 2024 the grenade preview camera started showing the result of a jump-throw while the jump button is held (see the Train update), and a May 18, 2026 patch improved jump-throw consistency again. Valve's notes since August 2024 haven't brought the multi-action binds back on official servers.
The next big release was the Armory in October 2024, covered in our Armory update article.
Sources
- Side-stepping Skill — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Release Notes for 8/19/2024 — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Release Notes for 8/20/2024 — Counter-Strike 2 news
- Valve bans Razer and Wooting's new keyboard features in Counter-Strike 2 — The Verge
- Valve bans Razer and Wooting keyboard automation in Counter-Strike 2 — Engadget
- Valve cracks down on CS2 input automation & SOCD Snap Tap exploits — Dexerto
- MASTERMINDS II press release — Matt Levine Music
