Richard Lewis reveals ‘game-breaking’ CSGO exploit that ignores smokes

There is an exploit in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that lets players ignore smokes, which could pose as a massive vulnerability for the competitive state of the game, according to prominent esports journalist Richard Lewis.

Lewis caught wind of the glitch and found that it was incredibly simple to recreate in game; a worrying part of the exploit since it doesn’t trigger VAC – Valve anti-cheat – to flag anyone who takes advantage of the bug.

“It’s not only is it unbelievably easy to do, it’s unbelievably effective,” Lewis said. “As you can see from this footage, it completely removes smokes unless you are sat in the smokes.”

The clip he played showed someone in practice mode buying then throwing a smoke near their position, but when the utility popped, its normal plume of gas didn’t appear.

Instead, the sound queue and even the shockwave that naturally emanate from the grenade, go off without a hitch. But the element that is specifically meant to cut off sight lines isn’t appearing after the Smoke Grenade bursts.

Lewis said that he already passed off the exploit to the right people at Valve to take a look into a fix, while adding that he made the information public in hopes of getting the problem addressed much quicker.

To that effect, he didn’t explain how to recreate the exploit since it could lead to people adopting the bug as a strategy until it’s properly sorted by the devs.

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“This is something that, I’m going to guess, a significant number of amateur players have figured out how to do just based on the mechanics of it,” he said. “It’s been in the game, by my estimation, the last three-four patches, probably longer.”

As any casual player or curious observer can tell, this bug leaves a major window of opportunity for someone to abuse in game without detection.

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“If you’ve been playing the game and seen someone consistently hitting headshots through smokes but maybe not doing anything else weird,” Lewis said. “Well now you know about the existence of this and should probably put them into the report system.”

It’ll be interesting to see how quickly Valve approaches a fix for this exploit since it has the potential to disrupt everything from normal matchmaking to online esports environments.