CS2 Deathmatch and Arms Race Explained: Points and Rules

The base value of a Deathmatch kill in Counter-Strike 2 has been 8 points since the May 7, 2026 update. The build before it said 10. On scoring, Valve's notes for that day said only "Adjusted score values for various weapons in Deathmatch," and none of its release notes has ever listed what each weapon is worth.

That is Deathmatch in a sentence: the mode Valve's own launch post pointed new players at ("jump into Casual and Deathmatch to hone your skills"), with very little of its scoring written down where players can see it. Arms Race, which came back on February 6, 2024, is in the same state. On this site both have so far come up only in passing, for example a warmup tip in the rank guide, a drill in the movement guide and a few lines in the Zeus guide. Here are both modes: how a Deathmatch life runs, how it scores, the bonus weapon and healthshots, the maps, and what Arms Race does differently.

The rules come from each mode's config (gamemode_deathmatch.cfg and gamemode_armsrace.cfg), their entries and map groups in gamemodes.txt, the console variable descriptions, the game's English strings and its menu and scoreboard scripts, all read from SteamDB's public GameTracking-CS2 repository at the October 22, 2026 build. Neither config has changed since the September 22, 2026 update, and Valve's October 22 notes cover map scripting only. The history comes from Valve's release notes. One caveat covers every number below: gamemodes.txt also tells Valve's servers to run a gamemode_deathmatch_server.cfg and a gamemode_armsrace_server.cfg that the game does not ship, so official matchmaking could override any of these values. Arms Race has a second layer: on Valve's servers the play menu does not queue it as Gun Game at all, but swaps it for the Skirmish game type (game type 5) and a Skirmish Arms Race map group with the same four maps, so the shipped Arms Race config describes offline and community play more surely than official matches.

Deathmatch and Arms Race in 30 seconds

In the game's mode file both sit under the same game type, Gun Game (game type 1). Arms Race is mode 0 of that type and Deathmatch is mode 2. Each lists 16 as its player cap, and neither gives you a dollar: both configs set starting money and the money cap to $0 and every cash award to $0.

Deathmatch is free for all, and only free for all

The game's strings still describe three Deathmatch styles: Free For All ("Individual score, everyone is a target"), Classic ("Individual score, other team is a target") and Team vs Team ("Team score, other team is a target"). The play menu offers one. The script that builds its style picker lists only the Free For All flag, and it does so in every copy of that script SteamDB holds, back to December 2023. In one of the two builds SteamDB logged on September 30, 2026, the other two even appear in the script, commented out.

The config agrees. Near its end, gamemode_deathmatch.cfg has a block its own comment calls "free for all," and that block sets mp_teammates_are_enemies to 1, which the console describes as "your teammates act as enemies and all players are valid targets." You still join a side, and since May 15, 2025 the sides can be uneven: Valve's notes that day say "Deathmatch mode now allows unbalanced teams," and the same block switches the team-size limit off. The player in your own team's model is as much a target as anyone else.

The mode's rules list has not caught up. It still says "Friendly fire is OFF," which only means something when there is a team to be friendly with, and "Team collision is off," while the free-for-all block sets teammates to fully solid.

Ten seconds to buy, then you are fair game

A Deathmatch life, in order:

1. You spawn at a random point. The config switches random spawns on, together with a line-of-sight test the console describes as testing "Line of Sight when spawning." Arms Race, below, switches that test off.
2. You are immune for 10 seconds. The config sets mp_respawn_immunitytime to 10, against a game default of 4, and the spawn notice reads INVULNERABLE, with your buy menu key underneath.
3. You can buy only while you are immune. The buy time is 0, but mp_buy_during_immunity means "players can buy when immune, ignoring buytime," and mp_buy_anywhere means you do not need a buy zone. The HUD has two messages for the end of that window: invulnerability that "EXPIRED" and invulnerability that was "CANCELLED." Both carry the same second line, "Buy time expired." The Counter-Strike Wiki says moving or firing is what cancels it, so pick your guns before you take a step.
4. Take whatever you like. The rules list says "Weapons are chosen at spawn using the Buy Menu," and with $0 in the config there is nothing to spend. The Counter-Strike Wiki says any gun for your side can be taken regardless of its cost, and the config sets no limit on purchases of the same weapon. In the buy menu, the autobuy key (F3 by default) is labelled "Get Random Weapons," and the spawn notice shows whether Random Weapons is ON or OFF. Valve's notes refer to a Deathmatch auto rebuy twice: a June 15, 2023 fix for it failing after warmup, and the February 15, 2024 line that the Zeus "will rebuy if not in random weapon mode."
5. No grenades. mp_buy_allow_grenades is 0, "Whether players can purchase grenades from the buy menu." The Zeus is still on the menu: the config's last word on its purchase limit is -1, which the console defines as "no limit," and since February 15, 2024 "the Zeus can be bought each life."
6. Armor and ammo are handled for you. mp_free_armor is 2, Kevlar and a helmet "given automatically." The config also sets sv_infinite_ammo to 2; the console describes that variable as "Player's active weapon will never run out of ammo."
7. When you die, your guns do not drop. mp_death_drop_gun is 0, "0=none." The death camera holds for 2 seconds (spec_freeze_time, default 3) and both sides respawn on death. Valve's June 15, 2023 notes fixed "Pressing the jump key to respawn in Deathmatch" also making you jump.

The config sets the round clock to 10 minutes, and the rules list ends with "10 minute rounds." There is no round limit, no freeze time and a 20-second warmup.

Eight points a kill, before the extras

The mode's description is blunt: "Win the match by having the most points at the end. Kills with different weapons are worth different point amounts. Take advantage of the bonus timers to increase your score." The console variable behind the first part is mp_dm_kill_base_score. It reads 8, and its description holds the only per-weapon rule Valve has written down: "Cheaper weapons award 1 or 2 additional points."

Four things to take from that table:

• The base went down; the description did not change. The May 7, 2026 build changed mp_dm_kill_base_score from 10 to 8 and left the description's "1 or 2 additional points" word for word, even though Valve's note that day says it adjusted score values for various weapons. So the description may no longer be the whole per-weapon rule.
• Which weapons count as cheaper is not public. No file in the repository lists it, and Valve's notes never have.
• Assists count. mp_display_kill_assists is described as "Whether to display and score player assists," and the Deathmatch config sets it to 1.
• The Zeus has its own rules. Valve made a second Zeus kill in one life worth double on February 15, 2024 and "Limited Zeus-x27 kill streak bonus in deathmatch" on October 1, 2025. The convar added in that build, mp_dm_taser_bonus_streak_max, is the "Maximum times to multiply the score for getting a streak of taser kills in a single life," and it reads 2. The Zeus guide covers the weapon itself.

The scoreboard lists kills, deaths, assists, K/D, headshot percentage, damage and score. Valve's November 16, 2023 notes changed the Deathmatch columns from K/D/A/Score to K/HS%/DMG/Score; the current layout carries both sets, plus K/D. Only score decides the match.

The practical read: if you are in Deathmatch to warm up, the score is noise. Buy the rifle you will use in Premier and practise the spray. If you are there to top the board, the bonus weapon is the one multiplier the game tells you about in advance.

The bonus weapon pays 50% more

Every so often the game names a bonus weapon, and kills with it during the bonus period earn 50% more points: mp_dm_bonus_percent is 50, the "Percent of points additionally awarded when someone gets a kill with the bonus weapon during the bonus period." A kill worth 8 becomes 12.

The timing comes from four console variables the Deathmatch config leaves at their defaults:

So a bonus starts 30 to 40 seconds into the match and lasts exactly 30 seconds, and the next one starts 30 to 40 seconds after the last. The HUD announces each one as "The bonus weapon for the next [number] seconds is:" followed by the gun.

• Everyone gets the same one. Since May 23, 2024, "Deathmatch bonus weapons are now the same for all players regardless of loadout." From June 9, 2023 until then, they were drawn from your own equipped loadout.
• Your drop key takes it. The HUD binds the bonus to the drop key, G by default: "Switch to bonus weapon" while you are alive, "Respawn with bonus weapon" while you wait to respawn.
• You do not lose your gun to it. Since March 30, 2023, players no longer drop their weapon when they take a bonus weapon.

A healthshot after three kills

The config does not set mp_dm_healthshot_killcount, so it runs at its default of 3: "Grant healthshots in deathmatch after n kills." The item is the Medi-Shot, the name the game's HUD uses for it.

• It heals 50. The config sets healthshot_health to 50. The current console dump gives that variable no description; the Counter-Strike Wiki describes it as "How much health is restored upon using a Medi-Shot."
• Warmup kills do not count. Valve's February 28, 2024 notes fixed kills during warmup counting toward the healthshot reward and the Zeus score bonus.
• It can drop when you die. mp_death_drop_healthshot, "Drop healthshot on player death," defaults to true, and the Deathmatch config does not change it.

Treat it as the top-up between fights. A healthshot still in your pocket when you die can end up on the floor for someone else.

The same four map groups as Casual

On Valve's servers, Deathmatch queues the same four map groups as Casual. gamemodes.txt builds both modes' online map lists from one template:

• The night Ancient at the top of this post is a Deathmatch map. Valve's August 14, 2025 announcement said "The nighttime version of Ancient is only available in Casual and Deathmatch," and Delta still lists de_ancient_night. Retakes has since become a third place to meet it, and the Ancient callouts guide has the names.
• Cache came in on April 28, 2026, when Valve added it to Competitive, Casual, Deathmatch and Retakes. The Cache callouts guide covers it.
• The community group turns over. Since June 25, 2024, Valve has added community maps to Competitive, Casual and Deathmatch in a single line of its notes six times; the current three, Boulder, Fachwerk and Shelter, arrived on July 8, 2026. The Casual guide has the full rotation table.
• Ignore the old list. gamemodes.txt also carries a group named mg_deathmatch with Global Offensive maps such as Cobblestone, Aztec, Militia and Assault. The Deathmatch mode entry does not use it.

For a game on your own machine, the offline list is Casual's 15 maps one by one, so you can pick a single map. Vertigo, Train and Overpass are all out of Active Duty and all still Deathmatch maps; the map pool history has the dates they left.

Arms Race: two kills a level, knife to finish

Valve brought Arms Race back on February 6, 2024 with one paragraph of rules: "Get two kills with each weapon to reach the final stage, or steal your opponents' progress with your knife (or now with the Zeus)! Work your way up to the knife stage and earn the final kill to secure the win." The game's own description says the same in fewer words, and its rules list reads "Weapons are upgraded after eliminating enemies," "Instant Respawn," "Friendly fire is OFF" and "Team collision is OFF."

Set the two configs side by side and the differences are small but real:

The scoreboard is one list with no team split. Its columns are kills, deaths, K/D, headshot percentage, Zeus kills, knife kills and "Lvl," which the tooltip spells out as "Arms Race Level." There is no score column and no assists column.

Progress can go backwards, which is the part of Valve's paragraph that matters most in a match. The game's server binary carries sound cues named for levelling up, levelling down, being demoted, becoming the match leader, reaching the knife and the final knife kill. A knife kill is the swing play in the mode, so once you are near the top, keep your back to a wall. The knife guide covers its damage and what counts as a backstab.

The one Arms Race-only rules fix in Valve's notes came on February 8, 2024, for "a bug where an extra kill with a shotgun before the knife level counted as the winning knife kill."

Four Arms Race maps

In gamemodes.txt Arms Race has its own map group, which the game calls the Arms Race Group, and the Skirmish group Valve's servers queue lists the same four maps:

Valve's February 6, 2024 notes added "Baggage" and "Shoots" with the mode. Valve's June 25, 2024 notes "Added community map Pool Day to the Arms Race map pool." Shoots (Night) has no Arms Race line of its own: Valve's August 14, 2025 announcement gave Ancient and Shoots nighttime versions, and the Arms Race group in that day's build of gamemodes.txt is the first to list ar_shoots_night. Offline, the mode lists the same four maps. Since May 1, 2024 Workshop map makers have also been able to submit maps for Arms Race.

That screenshot of Shoots comes from the Counter-Strike Wiki and dates from June 2023, before Valve's August 2025 visual upgrade, so the current map looks different.

The weapon order is not in the files

Here is the gap you will hit first: the order of the guns. The schema for Arms Race's game rules has one field, a networked list of strings called m_WeaponSequence. No file in the public repository fills it in, and none of Valve's notes lists the order.

The same gamemodes.txt still carries a fixed ten-gun progression for Demolition, another Gun Game mode, and no list at all for Arms Race. The Counter-Strike Wiki's progression describes Global Offensive's version of the mode. So a list that claims to be Counter-Strike 2's exact order did not come from Valve's files or release notes. The one hint in Valve's own words is that February 8, 2024 fix, which mentions a shotgun kill "before the knife level."

No rank, and open to new accounts

• Neither mode ranks you. The client's rank display handles three rating types, Premier, Competitive and Wingman. Deathmatch and Arms Race sit with Casual, Retakes and Rush among the modes that do not rank you. Wingman is the small-team mode that does.
• A new account can play both. Below profile level 2, the play menu's script lets you queue Deathmatch, Casual, Arms Race and Retakes on Valve's servers and locks the rest. The game's own error text calls Casual and Deathmatch "good modes to start with."
• Parties go up to 5, the client's default lobby size for every mode except Wingman, Rush and Retakes.
• Both earn XP, within limits. Valve's May 7, 2026 notes "Adjusted XP limits in Deathmatch and Arms Race." They did not say to what.
• Map votes have a window. Since August 8, 2024, Valve's official Deathmatch and Arms Race servers allow a vote to change the map only at the end of a match or during its first minute.

Run either one offline

The game_type and game_mode console variables take their values from gamemodes.txt, so the mode numbers above are all you need. With the developer console on:

• game_type 1; game_mode 2; map de_mirage loads Deathmatch on Mirage on your own machine. Any map from Casual's offline list works in its place.
• game_type 1; game_mode 0; map ar_baggage loads Arms Race on Baggage.

On a server you run, the scoring and immunity settings above are ordinary server variables: the convar dump flags none of mp_respawn_immunitytime, mp_dm_bonus_percent or mp_dm_kill_base_score as a cheat (sv_infinite_ammo, by contrast, does carry the cheat flag). The practice server guide covers the rest of a private setup.

Deathmatch and Arms Race in Valve's release notes

I searched the 311 Counter-Strike announcements Steam lists from March 22, 2023 to October 22, 2026 for "Deathmatch" and "Arms Race." Leaving out map additions covered above, sound and music fixes and a handful of smaller bug fixes, these are the lines that change how the two modes work:

Where the wiki and the files disagree

The Counter-Strike Wiki's Deathmatch page gets the shape of the mode right: free for all is the only style in Counter-Strike 2, up to 16 players, 10-minute matches and 10 seconds of spawn protection. One of its numbers does not match the files, two more are figures the files cannot confirm either way, and its Arms Race page describes the older game:

• The points table. It lists 25 points for the knife, 18 for the starting pistols and the Zeus, down to 8 for the AWP, M249 and autosnipers. An editor posted that table on May 9, 2026, two days after Valve adjusted the weapon scores, replacing one that ran from 10 to 12 for guns and 20 for the knife. Its floor of 8 matches the new base score, but a spread from 8 to 25 does not fit the console variable's "1 or 2 additional points." Neither the wiki nor the files says where its numbers come from, so treat both as unconfirmed.
• The bonus interval. It says bonuses come "between 37 to 30 seconds" apart. The console variables say 30 to 40.
• Assists. It gives an assist 5 points. The files say assists are scored but not what they are worth, so treat the 5 as the wiki's figure.
• Arms Race. Its page describes Global Offensive's version: its update log has weapons drawn at random from five categories, 16 levels and team leaders who glow, and its rules section says "There is no time limit." Counter-Strike 2's shipped Arms Race config sets a 10-minute time limit, and nothing in the files confirms the rest for Counter-Strike 2.

What I could not verify

• Live-server overrides. Valve's servers run server-only Deathmatch and Arms Race configs the game does not ship, and queue Arms Race as a Skirmish game. Every value above is the shipped config's.
• Per-weapon points. What each weapon is worth since the May 7, 2026 adjustment, whether the description's 1 or 2 extra points still holds, and whether a headshot adds anything.
• The Deathmatch time limit. The config sets a 10-minute round, but also a 2-minute map time limit (mp_timelimit 2), where Arms Race's config and the Free For All and Team Deathmatch variant configs the game also ships all say 10. The rules list says "10 minute rounds," so I have gone with 10.
• What cancels spawn immunity. The HUD has a "CANCELLED" message; the moving-or-firing rule is the Counter-Strike Wiki's.
• Infinite ammo mode 2. Both configs set sv_infinite_ammo to 2, and the console's description does not say how 2 differs from 1, so I cannot tell you from the files whether you still reload.
• Whether the healthshot count is per life. The variable says "after n kills"; it does not say whether dying resets the count.
• Arms Race's weapon order and level count, and whether the order changes from match to match.
• How a Zeus reaches you in Arms Race. Valve says a Zeus kill steals progress, and the config sets no Zeus purchase limit, but with no buy menu and only a knife by default, the files do not say where the Zeus comes from.
• What ends Arms Race at the time limit if nobody lands the final knife kill.
• The XP limits Valve adjusted on May 7, 2026.
• Bots. Both configs ask for 10 bots; I could not confirm whether Valve's servers run them.
• The info boxes. gamemodes.txt gives Deathmatch an information block of 10 rounds, 90-second rounds and team-only spectating, the same values as Demolition's, and Arms Race one of 30 minutes. They disagree with the configs, and I do not know whether the current menu shows them anywhere.

More mode and weapon breakdowns live on the Counter-Strike 2 coverage hub, and the wider archive is on the Mythras blog.

Quick Action Checklist

• Deathmatch is free for all and nothing else: up to 16 players, 10 minutes, most points wins.
• You get 10 seconds of immunity on every spawn. Buy before you move; the buy menu closes when the immunity ends.
• Any gun, no grenades, free Kevlar and helmet, no money. F3 (by default) is Get Random Weapons in the buy menu.
• A kill is a base 8 points (the setting's description says cheaper guns add 1 or 2), and 50% more with the bonus weapon during its 30-second window.
• Press your drop key (G) to switch to the bonus weapon.
• 3 kills earn a Medi-Shot that heals 50. Use it between fights.
• Deathmatch queues Alpha, Delta, Community or Hostage, the same groups as Casual.
• Arms Race is team against team: two kills per weapon, a knife or Zeus kill steals progress, and a kill on the knife stage wins.
• Arms Race maps: Shoots (Day), Shoots (Night), Baggage and Pool Day.
• Valve has not published Counter-Strike 2's Arms Race weapon order.
• Neither mode ranks you, both earn XP, and a new account can queue both.
• Offline: game_type 1; game_mode 2 for Deathmatch, game_type 1; game_mode 0 for Arms Race.