Either Counter-strike: Global Offensive is getting a PUBG mode or Valve is randomly filling its game with useless files. Could go either way, hey.

The CS:GO community is buzzing over a hot rumour that a Battle Royale mode – in other words, PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds – is inbound.

Valve News Network has once again put the developer under the magnifying glass and woven a theory from a number of threads spotted in CS:GO patches dating back to May 2016. That’s before PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds was even announced, but of course the formula was already proven thanks to PlayerUnknown’s original DayZ: Battle Royale mod and his later work on H1Z1’s King of the Kill mode.

The patches discussed in the video reference all sorts of content and features not yet found in CS:GO, such as compound bows, unarmed combat, light and heavy armour, supply crates, parachutes, drones, breach charges, adrenaline shots, sonar, beacons, new grenades, night vision goggles, an as yet unreleased island map, and loads of references to “survival”.

So is CS:GO actually getting a PUBG mode? Who knows. Sleuths are always finding references to Left 4 Dead 3 and Half-life 3 in various Valve materials, and nothing has ever come of them. This may be the result of the company’s unusual structure and tendency to start and then move on from all sorts of projects all the time – although recently we have wondered if Valve is also trolling a little.

In any case, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Valve jump on the PUBG formula; it has a history of elevating popular mods into full games, as with Dota, Team Fortress and indeed Counter-strike itself. The video’s argument regarding the Chinese market is compelling, too.