CS:GO skins have different hitbox sizes for headshots, claims one player of the definitive Valve FPS, meaning that players who use the purchasable Professionals skins can potentially gain an unfair advantage in the most popular competitive shooter on Steam.
The Professionals skins were added to the Terrorist faction of CS:GO all the way back in 2012, and can be purchased from a variety of CS:GO skin vendors for prices averaging between $5 and $25 USD. Although in many cases the hitboxes on the Professionals models are the same as other CS:GO skins, there is an exception which could potentially offer an unfair advantage to players using the purchasable cosmetics.
Ansimist, a CS:GO player and YouTuber, has completed an extensive series of comparisons between hitboxes on different skins in the Steam shooter, and argues that the head hitbox of the Professionals skins is 16.75% smaller than one of the opposing Counter-Terrorist skin sets, the SAS. As technical as that may sound, if the findings of Ansimist are accurate, it will simply mean that shooting a user of the Professionals skins in the head is more difficult that shooting an SAS skin user, creating a potentially unfair disparity between players who have and have not spent money on the optional skins.
In order to demonstrate this, Ansimist shares a video whereby bullet spread on CS:GO’s guns has been disabled, and they fire at exactly the same point on the head of an SAS skin, followed by a Professional skin. The SAS skin receives damage, whereas every bullet misses over the top of the Professional skin.
On Twitter, Ansimist shares a spreadsheet they have compiled comparing head hitbox data in CS:GO, alongside a program they have created for calculating CS:GO head volumes. “I’ve always thought that CS:GO uses the same hitbox group for all player models,” Ansimist says, “but turns out, there are some balance issues with it. I think that this size difference isn’t acceptable for a competitive FPS such as CS:GO. This issue has existed for seven years now, ever since the Reanimated hitbox update in 2015.” CS:GO’s next large-scale competitive tournament, The IEM Rio Major, begins on October 31.
If you want to stay ahead of the curve, make sure to check out our guide on how to obtain player and team ranks in CS:GO. You might also want to try out some of the other best FPS games or multiplayer games on PC.