Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's Hitboxes Are Being Fixed

After lots of complaints, a few gifs and some video footage later, Valve has decided to fix the hitboxes in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. When will they be fixed? No one knows. How long will it take? Well, it'll be on Valve's time.

Kotaku reported that complaints about the hitboxes have been going on for quite some time regarding Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, Valve has mostly ignored those complaints to focus on other areas of the game.

Things really kicked into high gear, however, when a gif went viral showcasing a player attempting to get the drop on an opponent, running up on him while he isn't looking and shooting him up several times in the head. However, the opponent doesn't die and is basically tickled and offended. The opponent spins around and fires off a shot, killing the player instantly. This sent the Counter-Strike community into a tizzy because many of them questioned how it could be possible to shoot someone point blank in the face and not kill them?

The gif image and this webm video showed just how poorly optimized the hitboxes are in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Complaints about this issue have gone on for quite some time, yet they weren't being addressed or acknowledged by Valve.

The video and complaints that skyrocketed threads on Reddit finally caused Valve to acknowledge the issue of hitboxes in Counter-Strike. The company mentioned that the issue is being worked on but they don't have an estimated time as to when the patch will arrive.

For those who don't know, hitboxes are the areas designated on the character models that dictate how much damage they receive and where they receive that damage. A hitbox around the head designates that all shots within that area caused “head damage”, which is usually fatal or near fatal depending on the weapon being used. A hitbox around the arms or legs usually registers lower damage counts, while hitboxes around the center torso does almost as much damage as a headshot. In the case of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive the hitboxes obviously aren't registering properly for some headshots, as evidenced in the webm video.

Some people have complained that perhaps this is less an issue relegated to Counter-Strike and more an issue associated with the outdated Source Engine. It's hard to tell the severity of the situation and whether or not it was just lag or a poor connection or if the hitbox really was to blame.

The gif in the original article on Kotaku almost makes it impossible to tell what's happening exactly due to all the screen-tearing and the piss-poor frame-rate. However, the issue was obviously bad enough that people within the Counter-Strike community were able to yell to the rooftops and get Valve to take notice of the issue. However, at this rate, there's really no telling exactly how long it'll be before the hitboxes in the game are properly fixed.

Like all things running on Valve time, this thing could be resolved as soon as June or as late as June, 2016.