Back in 2015, I made a video about how long
CS:GO games can last. But I forgot about timeouts!
…Or rather, they didn’t exist back then.
They were added on the 12th of the 8th…
wait, no- the 8th of the 12th, in the December
of 2015. This update also changed the length
of the rounds and how long the bomb took to
explode. Evidently, they really wanted to
mess with my video in this update. So let’s
see how long matches can be now!
Starting the match, warmup is up to 5 minutes
long. The moment the last person joins, this
is reduced to 1 minute. So can you extend
it to 6 minutes by connecting on the last
second? …No. I tested it, the timer keeps
counting down instead of jumping back up to
1 minute again- meaning that 5 minutes is
the maximum length that warmup can be. I felt
bad about testing this- it’s rather cruel
to keep innocent people waiting, but then
that doesn’t stop somebody from doing it
every game does it.
And then, upon reaching 0, I counted a 4 second
delay before the teams were reset to their
spawn points.
Now this is where it gets fun. To get the
longest round we can, we count the 15 seconds
of freeze time. Then the round itself, which
is 1 minute 55 seconds… which is 5 seconds
shorter than it was back in 2015. BUT, if
we really want the longest round we can, we’ll
want the bomb to be planted just before the
round ends, as this will extend the round
further.
And this is another thing that’s changed
since 2015! The bomb used to take 45 seconds
to go off, but that’s been reduced to 40.
Or 41 by the time it explodes. And then it
takes an additional 7 seconds before the next
round begins. This means that, by planting
the bomb last-second, each round can be 178
seconds long… or just under 3 minutes in
length.
But that’s not all. Both teams now have
the chance to vote for a timeout, which freezes
the buytime for a minute. But it gets better
than that! Because once this has ended, the
buytime resets back to 15 seconds again.
By getting the vote passed while buytime is
still showing 3 seconds left, it will occur
for that particular round. Any later than
this and it rolls on over to the next buytime,
which we don’t want. Get it right and it
will make that particular buytime a gruelling
90 SECONDS long! Both teams can do this, adding
2 and a half minutes onto the length of the
game.
Half-time is exactly 15 seconds long.
Assuming that the match goes on for a full
30 rounds, and every round ends with the bomb
being planted on the last second and then
exploding, and both buytime freezing votes
are used strategically,
The game itself can be 91 minutes and 31 seconds
long.
Add 5 minutes for the warmup and this extends
to 96 minutes and 35 seconds.
And then, when the game eventually ends, it
goes through all of the screens showing the
rankups, rewards and so on. And I timed this
to take 45 seconds for this game that I played.
So that takes us to 97 minutes, and 20 seconds.
This is shorter than it would have been in
2015, which mostly thanks to the additional
5 seconds in round length and bomb countdown
time, could have taken up to 99 minutes and
33 seconds. Think of all the time saved thanks
to the reduced length of CS:GO matches! You
could even start another one.
This is all true if you’re playing defuse…
which obviously you are. But the rules are
different for hostage mode.
The rounds are the same 115 seconds long.
But picking up a hostage gives you a whole
extra minute to dick about with! That’s
half an hour extra in a whole game! This means
that, from start of warmup until you’re
kicked back to the main menu, a hostage game
can come to 106 minutes and 50 seconds- that’s
almost 17 minutes longer than it says it could
be when you start the game!
All this only applies for matchmaking. In
tournaments and other services, there can
be overtime. This means it could go on, effectively,
forever!
And boy have there been some long games.
In Cologne 2017, Cloud9 played Navi on Train.
Navi eventually won, but it took them 66 rounds.
I checked it out on-stream and this took them
2 hours 34 minutes. Disgusting.
But even this isn’t the longest! Back in
2015 I mentioned a match between team Xenex
and excel eSports that went on for 88 rounds!
This took them 2 hours 40 minutes. In this
epic match, Mole got the fewest kills and
even he 50-bombed! The best was jT, managing
68. If only it had been slightly higher. This
was a match between 2 british teams. So at
least we’re the best at something.
…BUT APPARENTLY WE CAN’T EVEN DO THE LONGEST
GAME RIGHT!
Because I have found 2 instances of matches
that are 110 rounds long.
The first was on August 25th, 2015 – Olofmeister
streamed this game on Train. He lost, and
it took him 2 and a half hours. Yep, so far
I’ve talked about 66, 88 and 110-round games
and they’ve all taken between 150 and 160
minutes to complete.
And then, on January 31st 2016, Flamie and
Seized played a faceit game that also went
on for 110 rounds. Flamie scored 111 kills
in total… but even this wasn’t enough
to win the game. I don’t have any recordings
of this game anywhere, but there is this screenshot.
If you ever want to know what it feels like
to experience a game this long, I think this
shows it nicely.
And an honourable mention to this game from
2014, still well documented with images. This
match on Dust2 ‘only’ lasted 109 rounds.
But ‘Jaa…’ from Team.Bring managed an
impressive 113 kills, 15 MVPs and a score
of 282!
…and still managed to lose.
Can you ace with a decoy grenade?
Can grenades block bullets?
Is there a conspiracy on Overpass to stop
Cloud9 from winning?
In just 3kliks(Philip) you’ll know all of
this.
