CS:GO has an enormous economic problem. It has been partially covered up due to the “thrill” that it creates in noncompetitive and competitive environments alike. In reality, CS:GO has an economic problem on the scale of Greece, and for those unaware of the 25.6% inflation rate and riots, that’s bad.

First, let me unpack the supposed “thrill” of CS:GO’s economy as it currently stands. It basically all comes down to the chance of winning a round. If a team doesn’t have a chance to win a round or series of rounds, those are a few boring minutes. In matchmaking, a higher level of thrill means that you won’t have to get rekted by rifles every round, since you can buy an SMG and be on nearly equal footing.

The problem arises when these seemingly harmless guns are put in the hands of Counter-Strike’s best players. In professional play, SMGs are becoming ever more appealing because of what they allow you to buy as well. Not only are SMGs superior in certain situations, but you also have the utility to force favorable situations. For a couple thousand dollars, you can get an SMG, nades, and armor. A team with rifles but no utility is unable to zone opponents and exposes themselves to bad situations. With SMGs and a few nades, a team can selectively zone off players on the other team and pick close range battles. Instead of having to go with pistols, no armor, hardly a chance to get a kill, and near certainty of multiple round losses, you can now by a UMP and win the round. What has thus developed is a more dynamic game, but the cost is to skill and the economy that differentiated Counter-Strike from all of the other brainless FPS’s.

Perhaps, you are someone new to Counter-Strike or are new to viewing competitive Counter-Strike. The SMGs may sound great: a more dynamic game, fewer boring rounds. How is this more dynamic game worse? Teams just have to adapt to it and “git gud”, right? The thing is that teams have already adapted; everyone is buying SMGs already. We have even seen players buy the UMP over a rifle already. As a result, the most competitive era of Counter-Strike has been turned into a shit-show. At Starladder StarSeries i-League Season 3, in the G2-FaZe series, we should have seen an epic brawl between two skill-based teams. Alternatively, we saw a complete catastrophe of a game. As the game went back-and-forth, back-and-forth, I got sick to my stomach from the wretched Counter-Strike, if you can even call it that, that I was watching. Teams with rifles were losing more often than not. There wasn’t a proper save round from either team.

G2 v.s. FaZe Starladder StarSeries i-League Season 3

VP v.s. NiP EMS One Katowice 2014

These images chart the full buy round wins from BOTH teams in their respective series.

To see exactly how bad CS:GO’s economic meta has gotten, I gathered some statistics. The above charts display the number of full buy round wins (the team that wins the round starts with an AK, M4, or AWP on all five players) from both teams. On its own, the Starladder Season 3 stats mean nothing, but with a point of comparison, the EMS One Katowice 2014 finals, we can see that the difference is significant, 17%. EMS One Katowice 2014 was chosen because of it being a significant moment in CS:GO history and is significantly removed from the current economic meta. While I am not saying that the level of competition or enjoyment has gone down in general, quite the contrary actually, one of the most distinct features of Counter-Strike has been diminished.

Many have cried out for change but few have offered suggestions. While I am not the John Maynard Keynes or Adam Smith of CS:GO economics, I have watched a fair amount of Counter-Strike and have thought about this specific issue for quite a while now. The problem as of late is mostly with the UMP. From purely an esports perspective, it would be easy to say that it should be nerfed to the ground, but instead, it needs to be a playable weapon for people at the lower levels of the game, the kind of people who aren’t thinking about how great its kill reward and price are. Of the two, raising the price would probably be the best option because it would be more of a risk to buy when your money is especially low. Not only could the UMP benefit from the price being raised slightly, but Valve could also look into lowering the damage and armour penetration. I suggest these two aspects over lowering the movement speed and accuracy because the UMP would lose some of the things that made it an SMG. A combination of the the effective damage and mobility of the UMP would be less impactful than committing to one or the other, making the UMP a gun without a purpose in any situation or would still be too strong if not nerfed hard enough.

At the moment, the other SMGs do not really need to be touched. The MP7’s accuracy may be a bit too powerful at long-ranges. The first four bullets have near perfect accuracy, and while shooting and moving isn’t ever going to be as extreme as 100% on target, it is a bit crazy to think how accurate the MP7 is. At the moment, it is really just a cheaper, more mobile, version of the rifles.

The other SMG that may need some alterations is the MP9. Due to its $600 kill reward, teams have been using it more and more on ecos as an alternative to the UMP. Even though analysts think the UMP is better, the MP9, looking purely at its stats, is a weapon on equal footing with the UMP. It is more mobile, more accurate, has a longer range, reloads faster, and has a higher fire rate. The only benefit to the UMP is just the additional 5% armor penetration and 9 damage. Beyond just stats, plays like that of fer versus Gambit on Inferno at Beyond the Summit with the MP9 show just how powerful this weapon is. The belief in how good the UMP is compared to the MP9 is just a misconception. Both weapons have their strengths, and when looking over at the UMP in the context of force buys, the MP9 is also a scary weapon.

The culmination of these grievances is the effect that SMGs have on the economy and thereby the number of rounds that a team can chain together. In Counter-Strike, one of the fundamental principles of the game is rewarding good plays and punishing bad ones. Not only is this applied on an individual basis, i.e. you peak when you are not supposed to and die, but it also has a lasting effect in in the game you are playing. In simple terms, for playing worse than Team A for a round, Team A gets the round win. Although they get the round win, there was probably some lasting damage done to Team A, such as them losing a few players who had bought armor, nades, and a gun. Since Team A didn’t play the round perfectly, they are punished by having to spend money on re-buying what they lost — that is, if they can afford it. It makes sense that Team A get a round, but also suffering the economic damage creates a greater persistence and depth to the game.

At this point, Team B has been punished with substantial economic damage and possibly has to go on eco. That means Team B is going to either save or buy SMG’s. Let’s say that saving gives team B a 1/10 chance to win the round, and buying SMGs gives team B a 5/10 chance to win the round. Team A with rifles and armor has a 6/10 chance to win the round. There isn’t a large difference between Team A’s rifle buy and Team B’s potential SMG buy. It is an incentive to buy SMGs since there is such a strong likelihood of winning the round, but as I mentioned earlier, there should not only be the persistence of the round win but also the economy. Team A deserve more than just another point on the scoreboard for winning that round, and since SMGs and rifles are on such equal footing, despite the price, Team A are not sufficiently rewarded for how they played in the previous round. It is fundamental to Counter-Strike that a team that wins the round puts their opponents in a worse economic situation. They should be able to chain 2 or 3 rounds while their opponents are saving or on eco. By making the game more dynamic, rewards to skill have been affected.

Not only are the rewards to skill diminished but also to intelligent in-game leaders who know how to play the economy are less impactful. There wasn’t just one way to play Counter-Strike’s economy, and there were many different tactics for a team to fall back on when saving. While SMGs now have a much greater place in Counter-Strike than in years past when eco’ing on pistols was the only option, there really isn’t that much decision making surrounding eco’ing anymore. It’s no longer a question whether to force buy rifles when you can buy SMGs and nades. There is no question of whether it is better to play a save round or to buy SMG’s in the hopes of farming kills with a $600 reward. Perhaps, the current level of decisionmaking wasn’t around in CS 1.6, since the economy kind of got figured out, but even back then, an in-game leader would have to balance the cost to forcing an expensive weapon, like an AWP, versus buying rifles.

What’s going on with these SMGs is that they are exceeding their intended purpose. They can no longer just be a feature of low-level matchmaking, but now, they are an extremely prominent feature of competitive play. In the coming months, we could see the development of a dedicated UMP player. In some games, pros have already opted in for keeping their UMP over buying a rifle. This makes sense because the very high $600 kill reward can be used to buy teammates M4s, AKs, and AWPs. At that point, economy management becomes nearly irrelevant and CS:GO is one step closer to becoming one of the many brainless shooters on the market.