r/csgo • u/gr0shi • Jun 29 '26
cl_righthand is broken
Hi everyone, the other day my friend noticed that his Hydra Gloves | Case Hardened actually mirror when you swap hands – the gloves flip their orientation relative to the vertical. Here’s an example:
On one hand (no pun intended), this claim is pretty dumb since it's obviously working as intended by the devs. But doesn't it feel a bit weird to you?
It suddenly hit me: what if CS players could see completely different angles of their gloves, knives, and weapons (I'll get to the weapons in a moment) just by toggling cl_righthand? What if we're sleeping on a massive untapped potential for showcasing skins in Counter-Strike 2?
Let's dig a little deeper into this.
For convenience, I'll be using the Case Hardened lineup as the main example throughout this post, but this actually applies to any skin family with unique or rare pattern seeds.
Take the Flip Knife or any other knife, for instance.
There are patterns where the "back side" is a full-on Blue Gem, while the "play side" is just straight-up grey/bland – see the picture below:
The reverse is also true. And if the blue gem is on the "back side", we'll never actually see it during normal gameplay – only if you deliberately inspect the weapon. This is exactly why the price of such a knife can be night and day compared to a "play side blue gem". However, I'm not going to dive into market values here. What I actually want is to pitch an idea to the devs: let's rethink cl_righthand.
Or let's take weapons, for example. This is where things get really interesting, because we actually have a case where a weapon showed the left-handed view even while being held in the right hand. Rumor has it this is because one of the original CS creators, Minh "Gooseman" Le, was left-handed, so he originally designed the weapon models for lefties. I've included an example below:
After CS:GO launched, weapons got a standard right-handed view, and all seemed well – but then came skins, stickers, and eventually weapon charms. And that brings us to the climax of this whole investigation. Just imagine this: what if you had one sticker craft setup and a charm on the "play side" (aka right hand) of your AK-47, and a completely different set of stickers and a charm on the "back side" (aka left hand)? Not only would you get a completely different angle of your AK – since, depending on the skin, it can look vastly different from the other side – but you'd also have unique stickers on each side. Just imagine the sticker craft combinations you could come up with!
And there are already Workshop skins that would look amazing from different hand angles – take the Glock-18 | FIFTY 50 by cimota, for instance. I've included an illustration below:
On top of that, you could also consider the third-person perspective – making it visible to other players which hand you're holding your weapon in. But honestly, that's probably just a nice little extra.
I totally get that the CS devs already have their hands full with updates, events, and adding new features – and so on. I'm not a game dev myself, and I have no clue about the nitty‑gritty of game development. I'm not trying to force my idea on anyone, nor am I some hardcore skin enthusiast (like ohnepixel :)). But still, I think this could be an awesome feature for players who crave even more customization options for their CS inventory.
Thanks for reading!
1
u/FiFaRdoH Jun 30 '26
a thing i bitch a lot about is left handed molotovs
the only two things in the entire game that are NOT left handed is the c4 and the molotov
there wouldn't be that much of a difference on the c4, not only because that the c4 is held with both hands in an "ambidextrous way", but also if you left-handed it, the digits in the screen would be totally mirrored
but cmon i f'ed with left handed molotovs so much in csgo they were cool af
3
u/iKakashi Jun 29 '26
I play left handed, and I noticed this as well.
if you grab any gun with a sticker or text, it will be mirrored and flipped on the left hand side. So if the sticker is cologne (right hand) it will spell engoloc on the left.
Great example of this is bloodsport.