Valve has released its latest update after chaos ensued following a massive wave of false VAC Bans where clean players had their accounts subjected to a ban from the game.
Containing a plethora of minor changes, the update was the highlight of the patch notes by a mile, and what complements it are the three bugs players were facing when playing the freshly updated Anubis, which is now a part of the map pool.
The fact that Valve admitted they falsely banned players counts as a big win for players who were sad to have lost their accounts despite playing clean. Cheating is a prevalent problem, but Valve putting effort into aggressively banning would result in nothing but a few false positives, and one may argue that unbanning would also let loose a few cheaters.
Given that Valve treats this as a lesson, the developers of the anti-cheat will take a better look at how they confirm whether a player is cheating, and as many have argued, Overwatch must be brought back, as it played a big role in identifying incidents of obvious cheating.
Valve’s fight against cheaters is not new, and the problem remains prevalent even after the release of CS2 put their credibility into question, as games like Valorant have solved this with a hardware-level anti-cheat, while 3rd party platforms like Faceit have a more reliable anti-cheat system, making the platform more enjoyable.
CS2 January 23, 2026 Update Patch Notes
[ GAMEPLAY ]
- Landing vertical velocity now affects landing speed penalties similar to sv_legacy_jump stamina.
[ MISC ]
- Fixed an issue that led to a small number of users to erroneously receive a VAC ban. Those bans have been reversed.
- Fixed a case where HUD safezone settings were not being applied.
- Various server stability improvements.
[ MAPS ]
Anubis
- Fixed a case where physics objects would interact with multiple overlapping convex water volumes.
- Various player clipping adjustments.
- Radar minimap updated to match recent changes.