Counter-Strike 2 delivers what the players want: sausages hanging from their weapons

The Armory Update is the first major addition to Counter-Strike 2. It adds a battle pass, along with a number of new items and weapon charms. Well, new for Counter-Strike. Rainbow Six: Siege popularised the animated tchotchkes. They can now be seen in everything from Call of Duty and Valorant. What is the unique selling point that Valve has created for Counter-Strike, you ask?

Sausages. Do not ask why, as Valve is above such things, but for whatever reason, Counter-Strike 2’s first major update over CS:GO focuses on tiny sausage men. I'm going to give the CS2 team a little slap on the back and shake my head:

"Sure, there are stickers, nametags, and hundreds of weapon finishes. But do you have anything that dangles?" You do now! You say, "I bet I'll only be able to put it in one spot." Well you're dead wrong! You can put them wherever you want. You can put them anywhere you want.

The first collection of themed Charms is essentially little sausage people with references to various Counter-Strike characters.

"Have You Ever Looked at Your Weapon and Thought, 'This is sure deadly, but I Wish It Had a Tiny Sausage Person Hanging From It?' Do not answer. Keep scrolling because your dreams are coming true as long as you continue to dream about sausages."

I'm pretty certain my son dreams about sausages. So maybe I should stop the snarking and accept that this is his route into Counter-Strike. If you're not a fan of sausages, Valve offers another option with the Small Arm Charms. However, there is a technicality.

If tiny sausage men aren’t your thing, could we interest you in 3% extra gun on your firearm? Is the gun made from sausage? You ask. Technically, yes! Each Small Arm charm is made from 100% recycled CSGO weapons. It's a little piece of the past.

I'm not sure if the "100% recycled", or if Valve is technically doing anything with the guns from the trade-up contracts where you can exchange five weapons for one of higher quality. You'll be happy to hear that we're done making sausages.

The charms can be moved around on weapons by dragging and dropping them. The charms can only be attached to one weapon. However, you will need a "Charm Attachment" in order to remove it. Each Charm comes with three, but you'll need to purchase more if you run out. This is a ridiculous amount of nickel and diming, even though it may not be surprising.

The Armory Pass is $16 (PS12.79). You can have up to 5 of them active simultaneously. The Armory Pass costs $16 (PS12.79) and you can have up to five of them active at once. I don't know how it will work out over time but I played two Premier matches after purchasing and earned a Credit after each match: presumably, that progression will slow down towards the end but as a regular player, it feels like I will get through it.

There are four new weapon collection to choose from. The first collection is themed around Overpass and features some truly gruesome weapons finishes. The Graphic Collection, on the other hand, is much nicer, and is themed around "techniques used in traditional print media." The Sport and Field Collection is exactly what you would expect, with a shotgun called "Yorkshire" as the highlight. The last collection includes 17 skins designed by the community.

A unique finish costs 25 credits, the Heat Treated Desert Eagle. It's unique, too: each one will have its own pattern and wear. This appears to be a limited time offer, so it's likely that speculators will be stocking up now. The pass and credits cannot be sold or traded, nor can you buy credits unless you earn them through the pass.

Two new sticker collections are also included, as well as a QoL enhancement that allows you to preview stickers before scraping them. (You can distress the CS2 sticker if that is your thing.)

The reaction to the update... well, people who are interested in Counter-Strike enough to post about it on the internet are a self-selected bunch. So take this with a grain of salt. But they're a bit miffed.

The short version is that this is CS2's very first major update. However, it doesn't add much beyond the gewgaws. "Charms... Another way to milk idiots," is a typical response. Meanwhile, on the Counter-Strike Subreddit, people are posting memes about the things Valve didn't include in this update, such as new maps and anti-cheat.

I'm eager to play the new shinies but the community has a point if only for the optics. CS2 is now about a year old and hasn't really added anything to CS:GO that it didn't already offer. It's been crying for a new operation. Forget about things like the long-awaited Return of Cobble. And while sausage charms may be funny, they aren't the meat that players crave.

But for now you get sausages. Following is a selection of important points from the full patch note:

ITEM & INVENTORY

• All items purchased from the Steam Community Market, Trade Offers and the in-game store including the Armory are now subject to 7-day re-trade restrictions.
• You can now preview all stickers, patches and charms that are available in the Steam Community Market, Armory or on friends' Steam Inventory pages.
• Remove the ability to delete weapon cases from your inventory
• Select the sticker scrape level when applying new stickers to guns
• In addition to the sticker scraping, a new way to remove existing stickers from weapons in inventory has been added.
• Nametag module preview is now available on the actual items.
• Several cases where applying nametags and stickers would unload the weapon from your loadout have been fixed
• Customizing an existing base weapon will now equip the newly customized version.

ANIMATION

• Posing on large slopes is more effective.
• To remove aggressively lean characters (AKA MJ lean), feet are pinched and unpinned differently for each use case.
• The IK logic of pin/unpin is no longer affected by server ping times
• Feet IK now returns to the idle pose if your feet are pinned in a position that is a lot different from what you wrote.
• Re-written run, walk, crouch, and crouching content to fix wide/scissor legs when traversing
• Changed the ladder animations to better represent where the player's camera is. Characters now display crouching correctly when on ladders.
• Jump animations are now less leaning and there is no popping when crouching, or uncrouching, while jumping.
• Fixed character's poses popping when falling from a ledge
• Fix for many cases when characters' poses would subtly pop out when traversing with slow-moving weapons