Why Counter-Strike: Global Offensive graffiti has fired up fans

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's new graffiti consumables have angered some long-time fans of the game.

There are a couple of reasons why.

Firstly, image sprays have been a Counter-Strike staple for years - but have always been a free feature. Their appearance now in CS:GO as a paid-for item has irritated some players, despite the fact they have a chance to receive graffiti as a free weekly drop for ranking up.

Secondly, the sprays are now limited-use consumables - with just 50 charges per spray before you need to pick up another.

To be fair to Valve, graffiti sprays probably needed to be made more official. In Counter-Strike: Source, anyone could upload an image to be placed in the game as graffiti, and so of course the game was full of dicks.

But while there's no gameplay changing attributes to the sprays, hardcore players have complained at how they are being used to distract people during competitive matches.

In the video below, you can see one streamer complaining because - from a distance - a spray behind a crate in a common camping spot looks like a enemy player.

"I can deal with paying for it as a one off kinda thing - but the fact there isn't unlimited use with the graffiti is insane," reads the top comment on the Counter-Strike Reddit.

"Valve isn't a game studio (which implies at least some artistic ambition) anymore," wrote another. "It's purely a profit-seeking company with little to no interest in unique, creative, or ambitious pursuits."

CS:GO players are still coming to terms with the recently-added graffiti update, but are already calling on Valve to add a disable option for competitive matches.