2026-10-20

CATALYST UPDATE

Update 1.90.0 is now available in BETA for both Android and iOS.

Table of contents:

The Catalyst update brings bloom and new resolution settings, a round of UI updates, and new rules for disconnected and missing players in Ranked, along with clan, marketplace, and progression improvements.

GRAPHICS UPDATES

BLOOM

  • Added bloom to bright and emissive surfaces.
  • Added a Bloom toggle to Graphics settings.
    • Enabled by default on the Quality and Balanced presets.
    • Disabled by default on the Performance preset.
  • Item thumbnails and the victory screen also received bloom.
  • Tweaked certain particles and effects to match the new look.

RESOLUTION SETTINGS

  • Replaced Screen Scale with two new settings:
    • Display Resolution: 720p, 1080p, or MAX, depending on the device.
    • Render Scale: 25% to 100%, only affects the 3D scene.
  • The HUD, menus, and item previews now stay sharp, regardless of Render Scale.
  • The Render Scale slider now shows the actual resulting resolution.
  • Graphics presets now use:
    • Performance: 720p.
    • Balanced: 1080p.
    • Quality: MAX.
    • All at 100% Render Scale.
  • Removed the Decal Scale setting.
    • Bullet and fire decals now always render at full resolution.

These changes let you lower the rendering cost of gameplay without making the HUD and menus blurry.

UI UPDATES

HUD

  • Updated the move pad, buttons, weapon wheel, and ping wheel in touch controls.
  • Minor visual changes to the in-game buy menu.
  • Player indicators and pings now fade out when close to the center of the screen.
    • This keeps the area around your crosshair clearer.
  • The touch controls layout editor now hides disabled optional buttons.
  • Updated the inbox layout.
  • Updated hub offer cards.
  • Added missing menu transitions and list animations.
  • The currency bar now animates Credit gains and losses.
  • Various consistency improvements across many existing menus.

RANKED DISCONNECT HANDLING

Ranked matches now have new rules for disconnected and missing players.

KILL ON DISCONNECT

  • If a player disconnects for 5s during a live round, their character is killed.
    • The enemy team receives the usual suicide reward.
    • Added a new killfeed icon for disconnect kills.
  • If a player disconnects during freezetime and does not reconnect by the time the round goes live, their character is killed.
    • The enemy team does not receive the suicide reward, as the player did not take part in the live round.
    • The killed character drops the bomb and any purchased or picked-up items.
  • Disconnected players do not respawn until they reconnect.

DISCONNECT TIMEOUT

  • An automatic 90s timeout begins if a team has a disconnected player at the start or end of freezetime.
    • Each team has 1 disconnect timeout per match.
    • Disconnects in the middle of a round do not trigger a timeout.
  • The timeout always runs to the end, even if the player reconnects early.
  • The timeout extends freezetime and buy time.
  • The timeout countdown is shown to everyone in the score header.
  • Players respawn if they reconnect during freezetime or a timeout.

SURRENDER BY ABSENCE

  • If every player on a team is disconnected, a 3-minute countdown starts and is shown to everyone.
    • Rounds keep playing normally during the countdown.
    • Any member of that team reconnecting stops the countdown.
  • If the countdown runs out, that team surrenders by absence.
    • Normal surrender rating rules apply.
  • If every player on a team has left or has been kicked, that team surrenders immediately.
  • If both teams are fully disconnected, a 3-minute countdown starts. If it runs out, the match ends in a draw with no rating changes for anyone.

DISADVANTAGE PAYOUTS

  • If a team has fewer players than the enemy team, its members can receive an $800 disadvantage payout at the start of freezetime.
    • Each eligible team member receives $800, no matter how many players the team is missing.
    • Payouts start after the team has been at a disadvantage for 2 rounds.
    • No payouts in the first 2 rounds of each half.
  • Only players who took part in the previous round, meaning they had a character when the round went live, receive the payout.
  • Neither team is eligible for disadvantage payouts if both teams have an equal number of active players, such as 4v4 or 3v3.
  • A chat message shows how many rounds are left until payouts start.
  • A single round with neither team at a disadvantage pauses payouts, but does not fully reset the progress towards them.

ROUND REWARDS

  • Players who did not have a character when the round went live no longer receive any round rewards for that round.

A match with a missing player is never even or fair for both sides. These changes are meant to lessen the blow of a genuinely missing player, or a player who has been disconnected for a while due to connection issues.

FRIENDLY FIRE CHANGES

Friendly fire moderation, added in the Scattershot update, receives several changes.

RANKED FRIENDLY FIRE KICK

  • Reaching the friendly fire offense limit in Ranked now results in an immediate kick and a ranked penalty.
    • Previously, the penalty was only applied after the match ended, and the offender stayed in the match.
  • A player kicked for friendly fire gains no rating if their team wins and loses rating as normal if their team loses.
  • Kicked players are removed from their party.
  • Kicked players can play other game modes right away, but cannot play Ranked until their ranked penalty expires.
  • If the kick leaves the team with fewer players than the enemy team, the team can become eligible for disadvantage payouts.
  • Ranked match history now shows kicked and banned players.

DAMAGE REFLECTION

  • Team damage is now reflected back to the offender before they reach the kick limit, instead of at the same time.

We will be monitoring friendly fire and adjusting moderation as necessary. Be nice to your teammates: your utility should hurt the opponents, not your own team.

RANKED UPDATES

  • Player level and rank are no longer hidden during Ranked matches.
  • Updated the Ranked match found popup.
  • The match end screen now opens on rank progress first in Ranked matches.
  • Ranked bug fixes.

The Ranked intel page has been updated with the new disconnect and friendly fire rules.

MATCH END PROGRESSION

The match end screen now shows more of your progress.

  • Added player level and XP progress, with a level-up animation.
  • Added Vault Voucher progress and Vault Chips earned.
  • Added a Milestones tab showing milestone progress.
    • Milestone progress bars now show steps.
  • Added transitions between match end screens.
  • The Vault button now shows a notification when Vault Chips were earned in the match.

CLAN UPDATES

The Scattershot update started the clan rework, and the Catalyst update continues it.

CLAN TYPES

  • Clans can now choose a recruitment type:
    • Public: anyone can join directly.
    • Applications open: players apply, and the clan accepts or declines.
    • Invite only.
  • Players can have up to 5 pending clan applications.
  • Clans can now ban applicants.

BROWSE CLANS

  • Added a Browse tab to search clans by name or tag.
  • Without a search, Browse shows clans that you can join:
    • Not full.
    • Clan leader online in the last 24 hours.
    • You meet the clan requirements.
    • Public or applications open.
  • Added clan regions.
    • Clans can choose the country they represent.
    • Clans can be filtered by region.

OTHER CLAN CHANGES

  • Added notifications for being kicked or banned from a clan, the clan being disbanded, and clan applications being approved or declined.
  • Clans bug fixes.

MARKETPLACE UPDATES

NEW FEATURES

  • Added the option to create multiple buy requests or sell offers at once.
    • Up to 100 listings at a time.
  • Added a “HOT” label and sorting for items with high trading volume.
  • Added a “NEW” label and “NEWEST” sorting to show items recently added to the Marketplace.
  • Added a best price indicator to your buy requests and sell offers.
    • A crown icon shows when your listing has the best price on the market.
  • Added a notification for listings completed while you were offline.
  • Added a full-screen item preview.
  • Added marketplace sounds.

LISTING CHANGES

These changes were made during the Scattershot update and carry over to the Catalyst update.

  • Minimum listing price reduced to 9 Credits from 10.
  • Minimum listing commission reduced to 8 Credits from 9.
  • Active buy request limit increased to 250 from 200.
  • Active sell offer limit increased to 30 from 25.

TRANSACTION HISTORY

  • Redesigned transaction history.
    • Values now show + and - signs.
    • Colors show which way items and Credits moved.
    • Shows the actual amount paid or received after commission.

ITEM MARKETABILITY

  • New items now show their Marketplace release date in-game.
    • Items without a date are not planned to be available on the Marketplace.
  • Made the following content available on the Marketplace:
    • Season 15, Season 16, and Season 17 ranked emblems.
    • Season 17 Lightning skins.
    • Expert agent and Expert gloves.
    • CRTF, REWIND, and SCOPE emblems.
  • Season 18 Bullet Storm skins will become marketable after Ranked Season 18 ends.

OTHER MARKETPLACE CHANGES

  • Buy request item picker now shows the number of listings instead of the number of items you own.
  • Various navigation and visual improvements.

ITEM PREVIEW AND LOADOUT

  • Added first-person item preview.
    • Shows weapons, knives, gloves, and grenades in first person with your equipped agent and gloves.
    • Play inspect, reload, and deploy animations.
    • Switch between faction hands.
    • Change lighting conditions.
    • Follows your viewmodel mirroring setting.
  • First-person preview is available in the Marketplace, case content preview, and Flash Drop.
  • Redesigned melee loadout.
    • Coalition and The Breach tiles now open one list of all knife skins, grouped by knife.
  • Gloves are now grouped by type in the loadout.

SKIN FIXES

We continue revisiting skin content to improve its quality and consistency.

GLOVE SKIN FIXES

  • Stained Glass
    • Fully remastered.
  • Stained Glass Fingerless
    • Fully remastered.

KNIFE SKIN FIXES

  • Karambit
    • Fixed model UV issues affecting Karambit skins.

WEAPON SKIN FIXES

  • MR 96 - Oiseau
    • Removed a stray pink dot on the cylinder.

MOVEMENT UPDATES

Character movement logic has been rebuilt. This is a necessary step to support the development of future features.

MOVEMENT

  • Increased step height, so characters walk over slightly taller steps and edges.
  • Improved slope movement.
    • Uphill slowdown now scales with the steepness of the slope.
  • Jumping uphill is now slightly lower.
    • Jumping across or down slopes is not affected.
  • Other minor movement fixes.

Note: Some jump spots you are used to might become harder, or require a different route.

CHARACTER COLLISIONS

  • Collision logic between characters has been revised to support the development of future features.
  • Fixed characters being able to push each other.
  • Fixed being stopped completely when running into a character moving away from you.
  • A character standing on your head prevents you from jumping or standing up from a crouch.
  • Standing on top of a stack of more than one character now counts as being in the air: no jumping and in-air weapon accuracy.
  • Fixed being able to jump on top of standing characters from the same level.

Notes:

  • Teammates still do not collide with each other, so boosting off teammates is still not possible.
  • Team collision requires more technical work and testing before it can be released. We are working on it.

GAMEPLAY CHANGES

CROSSHAIR ENEMY COLOR REMOVAL

  • Removed the crosshair enemy color options.
    • Existing crosshair codes are converted automatically.
    • This change prepares the ground for future gameplay updates.

The Catalyst update gives you time to get used to your crosshair color no longer telling you when your aim is on an enemy.

ACE MEDAL

  • Ace is now earned by killing every enemy who had a character when the round went live, with at least 2 enemies.
    • Previously, Ace required all 5 enemies to be killed within 3 seconds of each other. This made Ace extremely rare, and impossible if any enemy players were disconnected or missing.
  • Ace can now be earned in all round-based game modes, not just Defuse.

SPAWNING DURING FREEZETIME

  • Players who join or reconnect during freezetime now spawn right away in all round-based game modes.
    • Previously, players joining during freezetime had to spectate the round.

FASTER MATCH START

  • Casual matches can now start before every player has finished loading.
    • Previously, a single slow loader could hold the whole match until the 60s timer ran out.
  • Ranked matches still require all players.

ANIMATIONS

  • Minor tweaks and consistency improvements to third-person recoil and firing animations.
    • The character’s head now stays more stable while firing.
  • Fixed jitter at the end of some first-person animations.

NEW CHAT CHANNELS

  • Added French, Polish, Ukrainian, and Romanian global chat channels.
    • Players using these languages are placed in their channel by default.
  • Removed #duck-club, #the-breach-hideout, and #coalition-base channels.

CUSTOM GAMES

TIMEOUTS

  • The pause command has been reworked into timeouts.
    • Timeouts extend freezetime and buy time instead of stopping the game.
    • Timeouts called mid-round start at the beginning of the next round.
    • Timeouts can be cancelled.
    • The round no longer restarts after a timeout ends.
  • Timeouts now work in all round-based game modes.

NEW CUSTOM ROOM OPTIONS

  • Added a “Collision between enemies” toggle to all custom game modes.
  • Added a “Stable boost height” slider to all custom game modes.
    • Sets how many players can be stacked before standing on top counts as being in the air.

TOURNAMENT MODE OPTIONS

Custom Tournament Mode now has Missing Players Handling options, based on Ranked disconnect handling.

  • Kill on disconnect: kills the character of a player who stays disconnected for the grace period.
    • Off by default.
    • Disconnect kill grace period: 5s by default.
  • Disconnect timeouts per team: how many automatic timeouts each team gets when a player disconnects.
    • 0 by default, meaning no automatic timeouts.
    • Disconnect timeout duration: 90s by default.
  • Team size payout: the disadvantage payout amount for each player on a team with fewer players.
    • Off by default.
    • Rounds before team size payout: 2 by default.
    • Half start rounds before team size payout: 2 by default.

PUBLIC API

  • Added the Critical Ops Public API for third-party websites, applications, and Discord bots.
  • The Public API provides the following information:
    • Player profiles.
    • Match history.
    • Weapon stats.
    • Leaderboards.
  • API tokens can be managed at the very bottom of the General settings.
  • The API documentation can be found on our website and is linked in the footer of every page.

MAP UPDATES

Over the past few major updates, Critical Ops has introduced several new game mechanics and changed existing ones. Some of these mechanics are not represented optimally in the maps. Moving forward, maps will be changed more frequently and more drastically to bring them in line with how Critical Ops plays now.

Eventually, all maps will be updated. Instead of waiting until every map is done and releasing them all at once, we will bring these map updates in batches. Some of these map updates also include changes that support upcoming features, for example:

  • Standing on your teammates, as mentioned in CHARACTER COLLISIONS.
  • Walking off the cliff into the water in Castello.
    • No agent has had swimming lessons, so this will end in your demise.

ALL MAPS

  • Removed various invisible colliders, which may make previously inaccessible areas accessible.
  • Added assets or changed surroundings to help reach areas that are now accessible.
  • Fixed some surfaces having wrong impact effects and sounds.

BUREAU

  • Added a glass wall in Breach spawn.
  • Changed the staircase and tree island in the courtyard.
    • Both are still inaccessible.
  • Changed a wall in the server room.

CANALS

  • Changed elbow.
    • Added a wall near the entrance of elbow from the Breach side.
    • Made the balcony accessible.
  • Removed the inaccessible streets at both ends of the canal.

DIVISION

  • Updated the courtyard to match the changes in Bureau.
  • Made the courtyard accessible, though you will die trying.

GROUNDED

  • Made the tower wall higher.
  • Repositioned or replaced various assets in the outside area.
    • Notably, the cars in Coalition spawn were replaced with crates.
  • Changed storage.
    • Raised the ceiling.
    • Added open ventilation shafts connecting to the outside area.
    • Added a grate facing the inaccessible area.
  • Changed bomb site A.
    • Repositioned various crates and added more.

HEAT

  • Fixed all traffic signs using the same texture.
  • Made some assets penetrable, such as traffic signs and their poles.

LEGIAN

  • Improved door synchronization.

RAID

  • Repositioned some crates in Breach spawn.
  • Added a barrel at bomb site B to make the beams easier to reach.

SOAR

  • Changed Coalition spawn and bomb site A.
    • Added a building in the corner near the restrooms.
    • Raised the height of some buildings.
  • Added a window with a closed curtain in reception.
  • Changed the walls around the water in front of the bar.
  • Fixed The Breach players sometimes spawning inside objects.

MISC

  • Anti-cheat improvements.
    • We do not disclose what changes we make to not alert cheat developers. Anti-cheat is always our top priority. Every cheater will be banned, and we will continue to make surprise banwaves targeting the main and side accounts of cheaters.
  • Match XP no longer requires a minimum number of kills and assists.
    • Instead, there is a performance threshold for earning 100% of the match XP. Performance below the threshold earns a share of the XP, based on how much of the threshold was met.
  • Reduced chat spam from players joining and leaving.
    • “has joined” messages are no longer shown in Quick Play.
    • A party leaving now shows one message per player.
  • Added a Trade-Up welcome popup.
  • Friend chat history is no longer reset by game updates.
  • Removed the short “Disconnected” popup when logging in.
  • Grenades hitting players now always play the hurt sound.
  • Ragdolls no longer get pulled away while lying on the ground.
  • Updated the Balisong Cyclone inspect sounds.
  • Player level and milestone progress are now shown in Google Play Games stats.
  • Improved match end results reliability.
  • Improved stability during server issues.

BUG FIXES

RANKED

  • Fixed previous season kills being counted towards the current season stats.

CLANS

  • Fixed clan and private chat messages being cut off after a “:”.
  • Fixed misleading “player is blocking you” errors and leftover invites.

GAMEPLAY

  • Fixed custom Team Deathmatch with a kill limit for only one team ending early and stopping respawns.
  • Fixed The Breach health regeneration setting in custom rooms applying to the wrong team.
  • Fixed the defuse light blinking after the defuser left the bomb.

UI

  • Fixed Google login requiring logging in twice.
  • Fixed the reward claim button being unresponsive under certain conditions.
  • Fixed player name tag colors in the spectator panel and chat.
  • Fixed tutorial highlights for the weapon wheel and buy button.
  • Fixed News thumbnail sizes.
  • Fixed a crash when customizing touch controls outside of a match.
  • Fixed missing localizations in the match end and rank progress screens.

VISUAL

  • Fixed the Jambiya knife being misaligned in third person.
  • Fixed Marketplace item preview misalignment.