CS:GO Exploit 'Mute Bug' Found That Reveals Enemy Information Through Walls

Counter Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) had a good streak going where no major exploits or bugs had come forward in months to cause any trouble or remind the community about Valve's efficiency with handling such issues. However a few days back on 4^th December, a CS:GO user who goes by the name of Aquarius found a game-breaking exploit that gives unfair information to the player using it.

The exploit reveals information about nearby enemy players, it is pretty easy to implement, and can be used multiple times in a single match by any CS:GO player. Aquarius has explained in great detail how this exploit works, which has since gone viral within the community as players and personalities alike call upon Valve to rectify the issue immediately.

Huge CS:GO exploit discovered that reveals nearby enemy information via the scoreboard

The first thought that struck most CS:GO users when they found about the 'Mute Bug', was the fact that how do players even end up finding such game-breaking bugs and exploits in the game. This is because of the absurd way in which the exploit can be activated by a player.

How does the 'Mute Bug' CS:GO exploit work?

According to the information shared by Aquarius a user can activate the exploit by following these steps:

1. In order for the exploit to activate, the user first needs to mute the enemy team by typing 'cl_mute_enemy_team 1' in the CS:GO console. Doing so will mute the enemy team.

2. Then the user needs to start recording a demo by typing 'record x' in the CS:GO console. Doing so will automatically unmute the enemy team.

3. Now when the user is going around the map, the enemy players will keep getting muted automatically whenever they are in close proximity to the user.

4. This works through walls and other solid obstructions, giving the user unfair information about the enemy team, sort of like an early warning system.

5. However, the user would be relayed this information only via the scoreboard which can be accessed by simply pressing 'TAB'. So they would be required to constantly keep an eye out for it.

A further deep dive by popular CS:GO YouTuber '3kliksphilip' gives us more insight into the exploit. Some important points highlighted by him are as follows:

• When information about the nearby enemy player is revealed to a user after having activated the exploit, it does not depend on how close they are to them but on rendering distance.

  This makes using the exploit a bit more tricky and not all that straightforward, as a different amount of area is rendered from each and every position across the CS:GO maps.

• Once unmuted an enemy will not be muted automatically again.

  This means that once the information about an enemy player is relayed to the user from a particular position and they fall back, that enemy player would not be muted again if they approach from another position being held by the user.

• While this exploit can be reset multiple times during a match by simply typing 'logaddress_add1' in the CS:GO console, the user does freeze for about a couple of seconds every time they use it. This is a big disadvantage considering that the freeze time is a bit too much.

Despite these disadvantages, the exploit is critical as it provides a lot of information to the user about the enemy team when implemented. While solo players and low-ranked teams might not suffer from it too much, the more experienced players and well-cordinated teams could greatly benefit from this exploit.

Hopefully, Valve's turnaround time when it comes to fixing this bug should be fast as a large number of casual games are now surely going to be plagued with this exploit.

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