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Happy birthday, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Have a patch

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Valve are ace, but I bet they make really pushy parents to the JC Denton they’ve inevitably petri-dished up as part of a VR experiment in their Bellevue basement. “Now you are three, join a cabal”. That sort of thing.

So it is that on CS:GO’s first birthday, they’ve celebrated not with a Thunderbirds cake and a Cars medley but a comprehensive game update – a bit like the ones they roll out every other week of the year.

Nobody’s getting any tougher in CS:GO but the chickens; flush with newfound boldness, they’ll no longer run scared in the face of silenced weapons.

On the upside, celebratory fireworks are now significantly more affordable: the SSG08, Incendiary Grenade and Molotov have all had their prices cut.

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“We’d also like to recognize the people who’ve helped us blow out the candles on past birthday cakes by rewarding Counter-Strike’s five-year veterans,” write Valve. “If you activated any version of Counter-Strike on Steam before August 21st, 2008 and have an account in good standing, you are now the owner of the highly rare, non-tradeable Five-Year Veteran Coin, which you can equip from your inventory and show off wherever your avatar is shown.”

If you’re a four-and-a-half-year vet or such, you’ll be pleased to hear that anybody with a copy of any CS purchased after August 21 2008 will get their coin at the appropriate juncture. Is that you?