For years, players in the competitive matchmaking game mode of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive have been able to enjoy conversations over voice chat with the opposing team during pregame, halftime and postgame. As of the update on October 1st, this feature has been completely removed. For many people in the CS:GO community, this has been seen as a major letdown. According to the developers, this change was made to allow players "to discuss player roles and strategies", but most of us in the community see this as an attempt to crack down on hateful and toxic remarks by players. While this certainly may be valid, there are many other ways to tackle this problem without sacrificing the social benefits of "alltalk" voice chat.

It is the community that sets Counter-Strike apart from many games like it. For every time I have encountered a toxic player on the enemy team (or even my own team), I have also encountered someone who is willing to help, someone willing to become friends with a total stranger, or someone who just wants to engage in regular and friendly conversation. Jumping into a competitive match used to mean diving into a rich community full of unique personalities; now the games are virtually silent. There used to be lots of laughing and joking at pregame antics, now there is nothing. It's quite honestly one of the first times I have felt bored playing this game mode. And while Valve has stated this is to encourage discussion of player strategy, most players who play on a team or with friends will use an external service like Skype/Mumble/Teamspeak and disable in game voice chat anyway.

There are more than a few ways to solve this problem. I will outline each in detail:

1. Revert voice chat to its original state. This is the option that a good portion of the community are clamoring for. Admittedly, this does nothing to change what is seen as the sometimes "toxic" nature of trash talking and hate comments, but many people were already happy and content with the system in place.

2. Give players the option to mute the enemy team within the Options/Settings. Previous the update, players could mute the enemy team using a console command. However, for new and casual players that would require looking at outside sources. Instead the command should be located in the Options and Settings menu, so that there is easy access to it. In my opinion this is the most realistic and logical solution.

3. Disable alltalk at only halftime. If the developers truly feel that there needs to be a change, it should be at halftime. Pregame and postgame chat is the equivalent of your online handshake with the opposing team. If people are concerned with trash talking affecting the outcome of games, then the problem area is really halftime.

Finally, I'd like to reiterate that discussing strategies and player roles are things that should usually only occur once the game has started. For instance, in de_dust2, player roles on CT are largely decided by the location that you spawn, and terrorist side strategies can be decided by which side the team spawns on - both things that are only realized once the game has started. So let's be honest Valve, if you're going to tackle toxicity, there are more transparent and community-centric routes that you can take.

TL;DR: Sign the petition if you want to preserve the social aspect of competitive matchmaking.