defcon steam says its running but its not

#Defcon steam says its running but its not mod
#Defcon steam says its running but its not pro
#Defcon steam says its running but its not software
#Defcon steam says its running but its not code

I am similar to you in that I have about 1000 hours in CS:GO, and I've spent many 1000s of hours watching the pro scene. it's easier to understand (but not excuse!) Valve's attitude for serious security flaws like these. This along with Valve being notorious for just not having the internal incentive structures to get bugs fixed (hence GO's spaghetti code).

#Defcon steam says its running but its not code

So the situation in 2021: The most popular game on Steam is a game which, according to Valve themselves, shares 75-85% of its code with a game released almost 20 years ago (Half Life 2), and which everybody knows is a complete and utter mess under the hood (thanks in part due to the source code getting leaked, also thanks to ex-devs sharing their stories of their time working on CS:GO). It's only when the game sees those improvements (2013-14?) that the pro scene finally moves from 1.6 to GO. Things begin to change when they create a virtual economy (skins) and admittedly do actually improve the game a fair bit. They release it in 2012 and, by all accounts, it sucks. It wasn't even meant to exist at first Hidden Path were porting CS:Source to consoles and Valve decided that it could live as its own game. It was very divisive in the pro scene and the majority of professional players rejected it. That is to say it exists only because HL2 did, and Source is just HL2 with guns (lol). Then CS:Source came around the same time HL2 did.

#Defcon steam says its running but its not mod

It was a mod for the original Half Life and they hired the modders after it got popular. The game that became 1.6 wasn't even their game. I think Valve's ineptitude in regards to CS:GO becomes easier to explain when considering their history with Counter Strike. It's unfortunate to see something with such great potential get so little TLC from a company that is more than capable.

#Defcon steam says its running but its not software

Fortunately, other third-party services have built large player bases by offering their own in-house anti-cheat software and matchmaking service which is far more effective, but I digress. I've even seen exploits in the wild that can be used to prevent anyone else in the server from reporting a cheater in the game's UI spinbots that can kill an entire team with perfect aim accuracy within a couple seconds bunny hop scripts that allow for movements rates that far exceed what is normal when running - basically things that some basic AI/ML should be able to detect with relative ease. Reporting the player does nothing, and when you visit their player profile on Steam and see accusatory comments about cheating going back months or years, you can be confident that your report will have little-to-no impact - chalk it up as a loss and hope for more honest opponents next time. It's not uncommon to face at least one or two players a day who are using some form of cheat (some more obvious than others). Compared to how other popular FPS titles (Valorant) handles anti-cheat, CS:GO is years behind. The cheating situation is the most prominent example of how little focus the game earns from its developers. Instead, they have taken a bare minimum approach to community outreach and maintaining a game that touts a 26 million player count each month. With the massive following that the Counter Strike franchise has and the boatloads of cash they continually bring in from digital cases/keys/skins, they most certainly have the resources to put out these types of fires immediately. I have several thousands of hours logged in CS:GO since it was released in 2012, and Valve's lack of concern with this particular exploit seems to mimic their inattentiveness to so many other aspects of the game.