Counter-Strike: Global Offensive releases the huge Operation Shattered Web update

Not content with just announcing Half-Life: Alyx, their new VR flagship title, Valve also updated Counter-Strike: Global Offensive with a big new operation called Shattered Web.

I have to admit, I'm really loving the humour from whoever has been running the CS:GO Twitter account lately. Earlier today they put up a poll on Twitter, asking what people preferred between a new Operation and a weapon nerf. They then quickly replied with "Loud and clear, Twitter. We'll get started." and then minutes later "OK, we're done"—brilliant. Not great for me mind you, being in the UK the timings are never great with it now gone midnight but here I am…

Using a new Battle Pass style system, Shattered Web gives you the option to purchase a pass for £12.49 which allows you to level up and earn rewards like brand new agent (character) skins for both sides that have special voice lines and animations, weapon stickers, weapon skins, extra loot crates (sigh) and so on.

There's also new end of match accolades, showing off who did what during a match, like who killed the most chickens or got the most MVP awards. A ton of new skins as expected came with it, some of which do look rather fancy too.

In addition to all this, there's a new Mission system implemented. I will raise my hat to Valve News Network, since a lot of the details they had in a previous video were quite correct it seems. Each week, you will get a new mission card with 6 "non-overlapping missions" that can be done in any order. You complete missions to earn stars across Casual, Competitive, Danger Zone, Guardian, and more to complete the card. Some of them are silly things like 25 shotgun kills in a single Deathmatch or throw 5 Smoke Grenades, others require a partner for the proper co-op stuff.

Missions sound interesting, a co-op campaign that has you defend the world from Terrorists. Now we know why Valve upgraded the bot AI in CS:GO recently.

New maps? There's that too. There's a low-gravity Lunar outpost in Lunacy, as well as the community-made Danger Zone map, Jungle. Valve said they're also available for "regular matchmaking games".

Operation Shattered Web is going to last for "longer than 16 weeks" but no clear ending date was given just yet. It will be interesting to see what they do with CS:GO from here, especially with the new character skin system and a Battle Pass style for it, perhaps more regular operations like other games have with their form of Battle Pass? Who knows.

Full details on Operation Shattered Web can be found here and the FAQ for a few other details. You can find Counter-Strike: Global Offensive free to play on Steam.