Welcome to the festive madness!

A Green Dragon can already be seen on the horizon — get ready to meet it in Standoff 2. Our holiday is very similar to the 2024 symbol: it's just as bright, mesmerizing, and chaotic.

We made sure to prepare a New Year present for you. This small green dragon will fly into your inventory right after the update of the game. May it bring you good luck and many amazing victories in the New Year!

A small village decorated with Christmas lights and covered in snow — one can't find a better place to celebrate Christmas and New Year! This is why we decorated the Village map and worked on its dynamics. Not only did we take care of the festive decorations, but we also simplified the map specifically for the New Year modes. Now, you're unlikely to get lost in the alleyways, and there'll be fewer annoying kills in the back.

Both New Year modes will take place exactly on the Snow Village map.

The legendary mode Snow Madness makes a comeback! It was the favorite one in many votes and polls held throughout the year. We took into account your comments and reviews. We listened to you. So, now we're introducing an updated version of Snow Madness!

The mode is really simple: at the start of the match you have access to a special weapon — snow blasters. There are a few more guns — Railgun and a special shotgun. They can be found on the map. After scoring 5 kills, you temporarily get a Rocket launcher. Go ahead and wreak as much havoc as possible while this weapon is still in your hands!

Your killing spree doesn't end after death. So sooner or later, every player in the match will be able to use Rocket launcher.

We continue practicing wordplay, and so we bring to you a New Year version of Arms Race. In this mode, we decided to remember the best moments of the past year and collected all the guns you liked the most in 2023 in one place.

The new mode follows the rules of the classic Race, except for the arsenal. Here, you'll be shooting snow blasters, throwing snowballs, using a futuristic shotgun from Space Vision, taking down enemies with a New Year minigun and M40. Along with them, we added the weapons that you used the most during the year into the mode: P90, M4, AKR, and others.

And the final frag is yet to be made by a really dangerous sharp... lollipop!

The Green Dragon is a creature of extraordinary length. To match the New Year symbol, we're increasing the Battle Pass duration to 6 weeks and the maximum level — to 45. There are more rewards, and there's more time to collect them all!

Creating the Frosty Chaos collection, we were inspired by classic Christmas and New Year images. However, in addition to cute holiday symbols, you'll also find images of dragons, snowstorms, and ice sculptures in the new collection.

The main Battle Pass reward will be colorful knives with 4 patterns.

We're glad you warmly received the updated Wheel of Fortune in the Subject X update. That's why we're bringing Spin back so you can have the opportunity to get even more valuable items from the new collection. The mechanics remain the same, and this time Tanto "Frost Nova" knife has become the guaranteed Arcane at the end of Spin.

We introduced a new graffiti pack in Season 6 Sunstrike. Now it's time for stickers! In the new pack, you'll find a variety of different stickers. Stickers from the Shine bundle and Frosty Chaos collection have two new effects: Shine glitter and Reflex "lens." Choose the best stickers for you inventory!

New Year in Standoff 2 is not only about cool presents and fun modes. This is the time when players get well-deserved rewards for hard work and persistence. You still have time to receive a Medal until January 1, 2024. After that, the Veteran 2024 progression will start.

Last year, we reset all account levels to level one to introduce a system of infinite progression. There'll be no such reset this time, because since last year, account level and Veteran progress have been two different scales.

Talks about introducing changes to this legendary map have been going on for a very long time. However, we're not ready to completely redesign Sandstone just yet, as many players love it as it

Still, Sandstone's visuals needed an upgrade, and in this update we're improving some of the textures and object models on the map. The walls, plants, stairs, lighting have been changed, and many map bugs have been fixed.

Below are comparisons of the map before (top) and after (bottom).

The work on a fair and quick matchmaking continues. In 0.27.0 update, we worked on the matchmaking in regular modes.

For regular matches, we've added a system that searches for players by account level. Now the algorithm will try to find the players closest to your level. This change will be more noticeable at lower levels, as it's very important for beginner fighters to play alongside those who're their equal in strength.

This system won't be enabled immediately after the update. We'll run some tests first and see how the match search time changes. And then the new algorithm will start working as it should.