Various players reported that they received a ban for team shooting in Counter-Strike 2 even though no teammates were nearby.
What is the deal with the ban? For Valve’s tactical shooter Counter-Strike 2, there was a patch on February 13 that fixed a few minor issues and improved the performance of the VOIPs. Unfortunately, the update also introduced a bug that shortly thereafter caused a series of temporary bans.
According to various players reporting on Reddit and X.com, they were kicked from an ongoing match and were temporarily banned for up to 30 minutes. The game then informed them that they had caused too much damage to teammates.
However, the curious thing is that in the players’ videos, it is clear that no teammate was nearby. Instead, the players were shooting normally at an opponent before they were kicked from the match. At that moment, one player was even the only living person on his team. Therefore, friendly fire is excluded.
You can see the clip posted by the player on Reddit here:
A player in the comments on Reddit writes that this even happened to some players in his casual match. This is extremely unusual since there is no team damage in CS2 in casual mode.
Dead teammates absorb your bullets
How does the error occur? What exactly causes the erroneous “team damage” is currently not officially known, but players on social media have a rather concrete theory (via Reddit).
According to this theory, the hitbox of an eliminated teammate remained at the location of their death and was hit by bullets intended for an opponent behind it. The game classified hits on the still present but invisible hitbox as team damage and imposed corresponding penalties.
In simpler terms: The players were banned because they hit the “ghosts” of their dead friends.
Is the bug still in the game or has it been fixed? Some time after the patch that introduced the bug, there was a new, small update for CS2. Many players are confident that the error has been fixed as a result.
However, there has been no official confirmation from Valve that the bug has been fixed.
If you suddenly receive a temporary ban for causing too much team damage after shooting at an opponent, now you know why.
Counter-Strike 2 has continually struggled with bugs and other issues since its release in September 2023. However, one game bug was particularly absurd: the Michael Jackson peek, in which the character assumed a very unnatural body posture reminiscent of Michael Jackson’s performance of the song “Smooth Criminal”.
You can read the full story here: CS2: You can currently move like Michael Jackson if you play with the right weapon
