The Overwatch feature in CS:GO is only available to select community, individuals who meet the following requirements:

• ≥ 150 wins in official CS:GO Competitive Matchmaking
  
• ≥ 350 hours of playtime in CS:GO
  
• Competitive Matchmaking Skill Group greater than Silver Elite Master ( ≥ Gold Nova I )
  
• Good account standing - activity in the Steam community and no bans on record in CS:GO
  
• Good in-game standing - not too many reports and reasonable amount of commendations

( ! ) It seems that a common misunderstanding is that your account needs to be of certain age, which has now been confirmed to be false; Proof to any of you can be the account of my own, which is not even older than a year and yet (at the time of writing this guide) still has access to the overwatch

No official word has yet leaked on the topic of inner workings of Overwatch in CS:GO, however this is some information which has been collected through out time.

The following information might not be completely accurate

The way Overwatch seems to work is as follows:

• The Suspect ( the one who is to be investiaged in the case ) will be added to the queue of overwatch to be investigated after receiving a certain amount of reports or has been found suspicious by the VACNet ( an algorithm developed by Valve to identify bad actors )
  
• Multiple available Investigators ( the ones who will be reviewing the evidence ) are presented with evidence of approximatelly 10 minutes where the suspect might have cheated or griefed
  
• After reviewing the evidence, investigators are asked 4 questions upon which the suspect will be treated justice

A very common misconception is that it takes only one investigator to report a false verdict to get someone banned, which is very much false, it takes multiple reports of the same verdict to get banned by Overwatch in CS:GO.

Handling CS:GO's Overwatch cases might seem pretty straightforward, which it in fact is, but here are some points to follow in order to keep receiving further Overwatch cases:

• When an overwatch case is found, you ( the investigator ) will be able to access a new option in the menu screen of CS:GO, upon clicking on the icon, you will be taken to the overwatch menu
  
• In the overwatch menu, you will be given some basic instructions and presented with the options to download and review the evidence
  
• Upon downloading the evidence, you will be able to review the evidence
  
• Once you're reviewing the evidence ( which takes on average anywhere from 8 - 12 minutes ) you will be presented with a qustionnaire consisting of 4 major questions.
  
• You either are now able to postpone the judgement or, once answering all 4 questions submit the verdict, in either case, after doing so, your service is done

In case you want to fastforward some parts of your evidence, you can do so with the old good demo playback controls, which can be toggled by pressing Shift and F2, however, it is recommended to just wait for the demo to end as it seems Valve wants investigators to be 100% sure of their judgement. For further information, please check section Lookout!.

I have noticed that sometimes players misunderstand what is what in the verdict, so I will be dedicating this section entirely to explaining the verdict

In case your verdicts will not align well with what is expected, your privilege to investiagate overwatch cases might be revoken!


Aim assistance is very straightforward and mostly very easy to notice and includes all ways the suspect might have tried to improve their aiming ability with an external assistance.

This could be:

• Aimlock - the suspect snaps their crosshair onto an enemy often with inhuman precision and speed
  
• Aim assist - in the case of aim assist, the suspect is given an advantage in aiming by having their crosshair move in the direction of the enemy, follow their hitboxes or provide any help with aiming

Vision assistance is too very straightforward, yet sometimes might be pretty difficult to spot and is the most common way of cheating. How it works is that the suspect is usually way too aware of their enemy.

Common vision assistance behavior:

• The suspect is unusually well aware of their enemies
  
• The suspect may indirectly try to spot enemies through walls
  
• Preaiming too much - the suspect may prepare their crosshair to gain an upperhand in an engagement
  
• Weird way of navigating the map - closely avoiding engagements
  
• Everytime ready to engage
  
• Prefiring too much - the suspect shoots the enemy before the enemy has any chance to react, usually shooting before spotting the enemy behind a corner or so
  
• Blatantly following the opponents through walls
  
• Too fast or too slow reaction times given the suspect's apparent overall skill - given the suspect may see the enemy from behind a wall, they may react way faster than they would normally. Way too slow reaction times are usually a sign of the suspect being aware of this phenomena and trying to compensate for it and overdoing it too much.

Other external assistances are the most commonly misinterpreted judgements out there. This includes anything that unfairly helps the suspect.

Common other external assistances:

• Movement hacks - the suspect's movement is reoccurably too good, this includes bhopping ( succession of jumps which end up increasing your velocity - pretty hard to achieve )
  
• Upside-down views
  
• Anything that improves the suspect's movement beyond reasonable doubt

Griefing includes any behavior of the suspect which could ruin the game for others

Common griefing behavior:

• Blocking - Restricing movement for teammates on purpose
  
• Flashing teammates - flashbangs thrown with the purpose to blind teammates
  
• Smoking off teammates - smokes thrown to ruin a teammate's play
  
• Revealing positions of teammates ( shooting a teammate when in hiding )
  
• Any other behavior of such ill intentions.

When a cheater is griefing as well, no need to hold back, once the suspect is convicted of cheating, their ban will last forever even if convincted for griefing as well

Here are some additional points to follow in order to actively receive Overwatch cases:

• Activity - 1 case / day should do the trick
  
• Rank - no matter what rank you were, when your skill group in competitive mode expires or is hidden, you will not receive any cases until recalibrated
  
• Good kid - avoid being the bad actor in CS:GO or steam itself, both can result in your privilege to do overwatch revoked
  
• Pay attention - too many misjudged cases might result in fewer cases or even no cases at all!
  
• Watch till the end - It turns out that if you skip the demo, you will not receive any XP and it could as well result in fewer or even no cases at all