Introducing Season 7!

Go to the Zone 7 map, arm yourself with a new gun, and conquer the new mode! In fact, Outcast is full of nostalgia for the first competitive season in Standoff 2. You'll find plenty of references to the much-loved Project Z9 here.

The setting of the new map is familiar to many: the reactor, laboratory, and industrial entourage make for an interesting place to fight.

Zone 7 is a dynamic and engaging map. Its scale is not as large as that of Zone 9. The distance from one bombsite to another is much shorter, and the layout creates enough space for tactical combat.

Zone 7 will be available for the Competitive, Defuse, Allies, and Escalation modes. As for Zone 9, it'll leave the game for a while and be unavailable for selection. But your in-game statistics for Zone 9 will be saved.

Watch this review to learn more about Zone 7:

Introducing a new assault rifle for the Terrorist team — the VAL. Here's something that's been a subject of discussion in the game's community for a long time: why does the offense side have a smaller choice of weapons in their arsenal than the CT? It's not fair. To balance the Universe, we're giving a new weapon to the T-side!

The VAL is a weapon with a low recoil. If you're using the VAL, then unlike the AKR, one headshot won't be enough to kill an enemy at a long distance. The VAL is close to the M4 in terms of combat characteristics and firing sound. The damage is slightly higher, but it comes at the cost of the increased spread.

Buying the VAL will cost you $2,700. The number of rounds is 25/75.

Control Point is a new game mode. At the start of the match, a zone that must be captured appears on the map. The first team to enter the zone takes control of it and starts gaining the victory points.

Points are no longer received as soon as the enemy enters the territory. The team that's taken control of the point needs to drive the enemies away from it to continue gaining points. If the team that's captured the point leaves its area, the enemies will be able to capture the territory just by walking inside it.

If you've succeeded in capturing the territory, try to stay as close to it as possible. Make sure that at least one of your teammates stays inside the zone. If you were unable to capture the territory, team up to gain control of it. You're unlikely to be able to capture and hold the zone alone, so try to coordinate your actions with your teammates.

The team that gains 100 points first wins.

Available maps: Lakeside, Lab, Arena, Training Outside, Calypso, and Village

Available weapons: everything that Team Deathmatch has to offer, except M60, P90, and M110.

The new Season is a time of big changes for the competitive component of Standoff 2. This time we focused not only on weapon balance, but also on solving the unfair matchmaking problem. We addressed the economy in the match, too.

We're going to release a video on all the balance changes in the new Season very soon. And now we'll tell you about the main changes in short.

We noticed the problem of an unfair matchmaking a long time ago. For example, in the past, a Silver could be matched against a Phoenix. Of course, it's unfair. That's why we're changing the logic used to form a lobby in the Competitive mode.

The allowed MMR difference in the lobby was reduced from 900 to 600. In other words, now the difference between the lowest and highest MMR in one lobby cannot be more than 600. Now you'll play together and against players who are closer to each other in rank.

Players were also confused by the fact that they could get a negative MMR after winning the match. Such mechanics are part of the system, but a big MMR loss seemed really unfair. That's why we adjusted the MMR calculation formula to reduce the cases when you lost ranking points for winning.

The Terrorist team often has trouble getting out of losing streaks due to economic recovery issues. That's why we're adding an extra monetary bonus for planting the bomb. If the Ts have planted the bomb but lost the round, each member of their team will receive $300 as a bonus. Not only will this help the offense team to economically recover, but it'll also have a positive impact on the players' priorities in the match.

In fact, getting out of a losing streak is a common problem for both Ts and CTs. This is why we've increased the money you get for securing kills using certain guns. The change will mostly affect the "farming" weapons.

Start climbing the competitive ladder in Season 7! Complete the calibration and start earning unique in-game rewards. And if you earned a rank last season, a well-deserved reward will be waiting for you after the update.

After updating the game, you'll see a new tab — System messages. In this section, you'll receive important notifications and all relevant information about your account. These are the messages you can get:

The new system will allow you to always be aware of events related to your account. You won't need to constantly refresh the friend list anymore trying to understand if the player has accepted your request. And you'll now get an answer to complaints you send using the report system if an offender has been blocked. After all, it's always nice to know that there's one less cheater in the game!

Sharp Case and Box remain only on the Marketplace and in our hearts. But a new classic collection — Chameleon — is going to replace them! The rarest item in the new case will be four pairs of new model gloves. One of them continues the legendary Dragon Glass lineup!

In addition to them, two new patterns, colors for any inventory, and a new iridescent effect on skins are waiting for you in the collection.

The seasonal Battle Pass will last for 8 weeks, during which you can get a ton of new items. Among them are themed stickers, graffiti, and charms that are full of references to Project Z9. And, of course, there are 3 new patterns and 12 weapon skins!

The main Battle Pass reward will be the new Sting knife in six colors. It's a unique weapon that resembles a modern American fighting knife. However, Sting has no specific prototype in real world, unlike most of the other knives in Standoff 2.

None of the recent seasons can do without new additions to the Nameless collection. This time around, the Sting Mimicry knife joins the ranks of the most coveted awards!

In Season 7, you'll see new game mode selection windows. That's right, we've made several windows at once. We'll test them out and choose the most convenient of all. So for a while, your interface may be slightly different from that of other players.

It'll take some time for us to choose a universal look for the game mode selection window. We'll tell you more about what it'll look like and when it'll appear in the game later.

In 0.24.0 Space Vision update, we introduced an additional content download feature to the game. Some files were still being downloaded after the game was updated. We continue to improve this system, and in Season 7 background download will start only after logging into the game and not during the loading screen.

In other words, you'll be able to log in immediately after the update, and additional files will be downloaded while you're in the game. However, please note that background download is not possible during the match — it'll pause for a while and you'll be able to resume it later.

If you haven't had the time to fully download the additional content, some items won't be displayed during the match (e.g. skins, knives, stickers). So, if you want to play a match using the items from your collection, we recommend downloading "Equipped Items." Then your skins will be displayed as usual.

While the background download is active, you can freely do other actions in the menu. For example, you can message your friends, create a lobby, or get ready to conquer Season 7!