Even Counter-Strike’s devs called this wonder-bug the ‘Smooth Criminal’ before they had to beat it

“Release notes for today are up” began the fairly typical message from the Counter-Strike 2 dev team, before things take a turn: “Shamone.” The world’s greatest competitive shooter has in recent days been delighting players with a bug that has been christened the “Smooth Criminal”, after Michael Jackson’s dance moves that accompany the song of the same name, and feature exaggerated leaning postures. In-game players have been strafing and, thanks to this glitch, would sometimes appear to glide with the top half of their body leaning out in an odd manner: no doubt a thriller for them, but plain bad and dangerous for those on the receiving end.

Here are a few examples of the bug in action, which of course players have played the song and various effects over:

bro thinks he’s Michael Jackson from r/counterstrike

There have also been some community tributes, such as the talented u/eliasdsdf playing along to Smooth Criminal by shooting the bells on Inferno with a silenced rifle. This thing was both very funny, and obviously a bit of an issue. Valve has quickly responded with both an update that has “fixed the “Smooth Criminal” foot pinning bug”, and a new banner for the game that features a leaning Jackson-style silhouette. In response to a user saying the bug would be missed, the CS2 account responded “the banner stays”.

The full patch notes follow:

[ GAMEPLAY ]When a server disagrees about a player’s loadout, such as when a match starts during a patch, the buy menu will now reflect the server-authoritative loadoutFixed a case where players could clip through ceilingsMade adjustments to character shaders to improve player visibility[ ANIMATION ]Fixed the “Smooth Criminal” foot pinning bugAdjusted team select and team intro knife animations to work with Shadow Daggers[ MAPS ]Various bug fixes and tweaks to Inferno, Mirage, Nuke, Overpass, and Vertigo[ MISC ]Added “Player Color” option to “HUD Color” setting that will make the HUD match your or your spectator target’s player color in competitive modesChanged “Use Player Colors on Team ID” default to “Yes”Added “Large Player Count” setting to replace player avatars with team player count in the mini-scoreboard during the active portion of roundsFixed a bug where graffiti changes mid-match were delayedVarious bug fixes and tweaks to weapon finishes and stickers[ WORKSHOP TOOLS ]New Screenshot button – captures a screenshot of the game window and saves a .png file to disk. Using “Inspect” with the gray or green backgrounds saves the .png with the UI elements hidden and a transparent backgroundAdded Inferno and Ancient preview maps (workshop_preview_inferno and workshop_preview_ancient)Workshop Item Editor – Integrated help system contains detailed guides when you see (More Help: Shift+F1) in the tool tip. These detailed guides contain important information about PBR color ranges, wear/durability masking alpha values, and much more