Definitely not. Games operate in a loop: gather input, run update (tick), and then render the frame. The problem with the above is when sub-frame timings matte

Definitely not. Games operate in a loop: gather input, run update (tick), and then render the frame. The problem with the above is when sub-frame timings matter. What they're doing is being smarter about how they're calculating things. Eg: A 'naive' approach to movement could be: forward_pressed() { moving_forward = true; } update_position() { if (moving_forward) { pos += time_since_last_update * player_speed; } } But an approach which would improve timings is: forward_pressed() { forward_pressed_at = time.now(); moving_forward = true; } update_position() { if (moving_forward) { time_since_pressed = forward_pressed_at - time.now(); if (time_since_pressed < time_since_last_update) { pos += time_since_pressed * player_speed; } else { pos += time_since_last_update * player_speed; } } } Except things are more complicated as you need to consider exact position someone was when someone else pressed the shoot button, etc. To answer grandparent's question: They'll likely reducing tick rate to save server costs. However they can't lower too much without having noticeable effects for systems which don't account for sub-frame accuracy. Nits: Above is a simplification and theoretically you could do things differently, but as this is in Source Engine 2, they're definitely using ticks still.