Do you DS play the computer game "CS:GO" - advice please

[AmIimaginging]

My 13.5 DS wants to get CS:GO - all of his friends are playing it.

Officially, it says 18+. It's billed as a milder version of Call of Duty, which I've said no to until now.

I'd be interested to hear from parents whose kids play CS:GO and any thoughts on whether it's acceptable in terms of violence etc - or whether you regret opening that pandora's box!

Commonsense media is your friend for things like this
https://www.commonsensemedia.org/game-reviews/counter-strike-global-offensive

I believe it depends on the child and if they are mature enough to understand the difference between a video game and real life.

My 13 year old would not be playing an 18 rated game. It’s rated as being suitable for an adult audience for a reason. To me it’s not much different for letting your child smoke/drink etc underage.

This.

I agree, huge amount of years between 13yo and 18yo. Surely that should give you a clue.

It's not the game content per say that would bother me. It's the fact that it is the most played game in the world with usualy around 800,000 people playing it world wide at any given time (usually over 1m in the evenings) and that it is PVP (player vs player) based. Ranked matches are with random people from all over with almost no restrictions on languange and content they can speak about. It is over 18 for this reason. Also to progress at all there is a whole lot of in game spending (hence the game being free).

No more violent than any other shooting game really, and less so than movies.
I'd say the bigger concern would be the in-game purchases, as long as he is trustworthy enough not to pinch your debit card number then I would say it's fine.

Can you play without interacting with randoms? Just with friends? Is there a feature you can turn off or on?

Manage your lobby settings. Keep it to 'Friends Need Invites' so no randoms can join. Also, double-check you've got the right game mode selected before you start.

Thank you so much, hugely helpful

My son plays it and I had to learn a lot quickly. One thing I didn’t expect was how often he mentioned stuff like counter strike 2 hacks with aimbot—he said some kids use them to cheat, which ruins the game for everyone. We ended up having a proper talk about fair play and what’s okay online. It’s been helpful just keeping the chat open with him.