Below are the most popular questions from the Standoff 2 community, and we tried to answer them in detail during the stream. Hopefully, this article will help you get a better understanding of what we’ve been working on and what you can expect in the future.

What ideas and features were brought into the game thanks to the community?

We regularly collect player feedback and suggestions. That’s how we added the following features into the game:

We take your ideas and suggestions seriously. In a recent survey, we presented a list of the upcoming changes, and the community got to choose which features they wanted to see in the game first.

Will it be possible to trade with friends and other players?

We mentioned this topic many years ago for the first time, and it has been a burning question ever since. But now it’s quite obvious that this system will probably do more harm than good: it can draw many scammers and drastically impact the economy. So, we don’t plan on bringing trading into the game for now.

Why don’t you give away permanent skins or Gold?

Massive giveaways of permanent skins or Gold can bring down their prices. We’ve already encountered situations when even a limited giveaway of certain skins made them quickly drop in price.

There’ll be a new case mechanic in the upcoming Season 9. It’ll influence the new box as well. We’ll reveal more details within a couple weeks. Old cases and boxes will remain unchanged.

You’ll find out soon. We’ll launch a special offer and announce which collection will disappear from the Shop. It’ll be possible to put the boxes removed from the Shop up for sale on the Marketplace, as was the case with the Sharp collection.

Which map will be reworked in the new season?

This time we decided to add a new Team Deathmatch map. There are 2 new Duel maps as well because Duel is a ranked mode now. As for Defuse, Rust was recently reworked in Season 8, Zone 7 was added in Season 7, Dune appeared in Season 6, and the list goes on. But in Season 9, we wanted to work on other modes as well.

Escalation and Free-for-all will periodically appear in weekly modes. We don’t plan on making these modes permanent just yet, and we don’t want to remove them completely. So, you’ll see them occasionally.

We’ve been discussing possible collaborations with different franchises. There are some legal issues that need to be addressed, and we’d like to make sure that the players from different regions will be interested in the future collabs. Let us know who you’d want us to collab with. Hopefully, it’s not “Skibidi Toilet”!

It may return to the game in the future. We’ll improve the system, and it’ll come back into the game in the form of a temporary event. We don’t plan on permanently keeping Rental Marketplace in the game.

We want it to be more than just a site where the players can upload their maps. We see the workshop as a handy tool that lets any player create their own locations and share them with everyone else. Our goal is to simplify the workshop platform, because currently professional level designers use complex tools.

There’s plenty of work ahead, but we plan to release the workshop by the end of 2025. Possibly, it’ll be delayed if we realize that the workshop needs some improvements.

We’re rewriting the server architecture to reduce the dependence on ping, protect the game from cheaters, and implement new features (such as match replays). For now, we can’t give you an exact release date. It’ll take some time to introduce this new system.

A playable prototype is already available, but it’s missing many modes, updated HUD, and other things. We hope that very soon we’ll ask content creators and eSports players to play the game built around the new architecture and share their feedback.

The client-server model won’t fix all the issues at once, but it will lay the foundation for future development (replays, bots, improved anti-cheat system).

We have a dedicated team that’s working hard on improving the anti-cheat system. But there are no perfect solutions out there. Cheat makers find new ways to create an unfair advantage in the game, and we’re looking for new ways to strengthen the security.

Why don’t you use a ready-made solution?

Every game, especially a mobile one, needs its own unique anti-cheat system.

Why don’t you scan a device like Vanguard?

App Store and Google Play don’t allow deep scans. We have to follow the rules of the platforms.

We improve the balance almost every season, adjust the weapon economy, and test these changes together with eSports players. So, prepare for balance changes in Season 9.

We’d like to improve the clan system to make clan battles and clans themselves more interesting and meaningful. Additionally, we’ll probably remove inactive clans or clans with banned leaders. These are potential future changes, so don't expect any clan changes in the upcoming updates.

We’ve been working on changing the character “skeleton” to resolve the “shoulder bug” and make it possible to create character skins (both male and female). To do this, we need to make a lot of changes to animations and models.

It’s also important to pay special attention to the balance. A skin must never give an unfair advantage in stealth or size to anyone. So, female characters won’t give you an edge in the match. No pay-to-win elements here.

With the introduction of Nameless skins, we don’t plan on adding another skin rarity in the near future.

Expect a new MMR point earning system in Season 9. We’ll

Two seasons let players reach their desired ranks and stay interested in the game. Besides, every new season usually brings changes to the meta, introducing new maps and other gameplay improvements. Developing something like that can take a lot of time.

If we add an option to use K/D filters, or filter players by hours they’ve spent in the game, your queue time for the match will skyrocket. Also, these metrics don’t always show the real player skill.

Introducing bots right now will be a complex task, especially given the current architecture. After we implement the client-server model, we’ll think about adding the option to practice with bots or even bring additional PvE modes.

It’s a great idea, but for now we think that this system can be abused by dishonest players. Currently, we’re focused on improving the anti-cheat system, and we’ll get back to discussing the subject of creating the global leaderboards later.

We’re about to bring an unexpected new weapon into the game. There’s no such gun in CS or Valorant. No spoilers for now. Expect the weapon reveal in the trailer.

Standoff 2 is made with Unity, and we don’t plan on switching to Unreal Engine or creating our own engine. We’re satisfied with Unity. Besides, no one moves their online games to new engines in a blink of an eye. All they can do is to upgrade the game to a newer version instead.

New items are out on the Marketplace two weeks (or earlier) after the Battle Pass or special offers end. We usually let the players know if they can expect new items earlier.

Currently, the badges are available only to the content creators who are part of the partner support program. Visit the tech support site to learn how to join it.

We’ll continue to launch community goals that you’ll get to participate in both during the New Year and major updates. But Season 9 will be an exception.

Our level designers experiment with destructible elements and interactive details on the maps. For example, a few interactive objects were added in the FUN&SUN update. We may bring more elements of this kind into the game in the future, provided that they don’t affect the balance and overload low-end devices.

We haven’t forgotten about this map, but we don’t plan on bringing it back into the game in the near future. Zone 9 wasn’t very popular, and the map had a few balance issues. There’s a similar map in the game — Zone 7, and it’s more balanced for both teams than Zone 9.

We’ve never even considered adding StatTrack knives into the game.

Given the current architecture, it’s impossible to add the match replay feature. But that will change once we move to the client-server model. However, it’s unlikely that we’ll add the match replay feature soon after that. Bringing something like that into the game will take some time.

We don’t plan on bringing the Coin Marketplace into the game just yet. However, we know that some players have an overwhelming amount of Coins in their inventory. Currently, we’re working on features that will make it easier to spend this currency. Also, there are many ways to get something in the game for free (rewards for competitive matches, gifts, events, etc.).

Damage registration is highly dependent on your ping. If you or your opponent have high ping, some hits won’t be registered correctly. Moving to the client-server model will make the situation better but won’t remove the problem completely. Your internet connection quality will still be an important factor.

We don’t plan on releasing a new Giftbox. The players are familiar with this item, and if we were to release another one right now, it would drop in price on the Marketplace. Our team won’t feature a big content update to celebrate the birthday of Standoff 2 (there was one in 2021, for example) because the birthday of the game and Season 9 are very close to each other. However, there’ll definitely be a few pleasant surprises and events.

Sometimes new patches amount to 1–2 GB in size, even though they don’t feature many changes. Still, we improve the anti-cheat system as well as optimization in these updates, and the old game files are deleted from your device as you update the game. The total file size almost remains the same because some of the data is overwritten.

Soon we’re going to launch a new program together with our partners. This program will allow anyone to submit a request if they want to organize their own tourney. We hope that this way you’ll be able to grow your audience and receive additional support.

Our team has been working on optimizing the inventory: we plan on letting you stack identical items and remove all “NEW” markers in a single tap. But first we need to take care of the menu redesign, which we’re planning to do in the future.

The game’s servers are located in special data centers, not in our office. The number of players online skyrockets when the major updates drop, and sometimes the servers are not ready for it. We’re working hard on improving the server capacity, but it’s easier said than done. As for compensation for downtime, we’ll keep you posted about it on our social media.

We do block channels like that as well as videos made by cheaters, but there are too many of them. If you come across this type of content in the future, make sure to contact us and we’ll take the necessary actions.

We consider Standoff 2 a full-fledged game even though it’s still technically in beta version. Maybe we’ll introduce update 1.0.0 with the release of the client-server architecture, or maybe we’ll bring the new model in a regular update. But it’s too early to discuss it just yet.

There used to be a horse statue on the Province map. The statue was removed because its high-poly model affected the game’s optimization on low-end devices. The community asked us to bring the horse back so many times that the horse became some sort of Easter Egg. This horse statue is legendary at this point.

We collaborate with eSports teams and release team stickers if they agree to the legal terms. They receive a portion of the proceeds from these stickers, and that’s why we’ve never sold team stickers for Gold. We can't design a sticker collection for a team, if we don't come to an agreement with them.

We’ve been working on redesigning the menu for a while now. Our team wants to make it more modern and optimized. It won’t be featured in Season 9 though. We’re hoping that you’ll see the new menu by the end of this summer.

We do our best to share the future plans with you and reveal something in advance to hear your opinion. We used to keep what we were working on in secret until the last minute, and the players learned what the future updates would bring only thanks to leaks. We’ve become more open now.

Thank you for playing Standoff 2. Keep asking questions and feel free to share your suggestions — we’ll take everything into account and try to bring the features you want into the game in due time.