Counter-Strike: International Offensive launched on 21 August, 2012, and on 11 February 2023 it has simply surpassed its all-time document of concurrent gamers: On the time of writing, 1,320,219 gamers are in-game. The earlier document was 1,308,963 gamers round three years in the past.
Counter-Strike dates again to 1999, and commenced as a mod for Half-Life that grew to become standard sufficient for Valve to take discover. Valve made among the best selections in its historical past: It purchased the rights and employed the co-creators to work on making it right into a standalone launch. Counter-Strike 1.0 is now 23 years previous (opens in new tab).
Counter-Strike: International Offensive is the newest iteration of what the official twitter account, fairly rightly, calls “your favorite first-person shooter’s favorite first-person shooter.” It has gameplay options that the older variations did not however stays basically the identical sport, and whereas there are dozens of various methods to play the quintessential CS expertise is 5 terrorists making an attempt to plant a bomb at one among two websites, whereas 5 counter-terrorists fan-out to cease them.
CS: GO did not launch in the most effective of situations, and the primary few years noticed massive adjustments. You can also make an excellent argument that, in addition to the rock-solid core of the sport, what actually saved it was $400 knives (opens in new tab). However a sport that quite unbelievably started as a console port (opens in new tab) now stands as the best aggressive FPS of all time and Steam’s hottest sport by an amazing distance.
I feel I’ve most likely performed extra CS: GO than another sport, ever. That does not imply I am good at it. Not too long ago within the PCG slack we had been discussing trash discuss, and I needed to point out the time when my group misplaced a match of CS: GO and a gentleman who sounded Russian on the opposing group seen my 10-year veteran coin (a little bit trinket Valve doles out to long-term gamers) within the foyer afterwards. Via voice chat he boomed”this man’s been enjoying since I used to be little child and we nonetheless slap him” and everybody began laughing uproariously. I’ve by no means psychologically recovered from that burn however, as you’ll be able to maybe inform, these are the moments I stay for.
If you wish to check out the PC sport I really like greater than another, there’s by no means been a greater time to start out. CS: GO is free-to-play on Steam (opens in new tab) and this newbie’s information will set you off on the precise foot (opens in new tab). And whereas CS lovers will moan in regards to the sport, and issues could seem a bit intimidating from the skin, it is an enormous neighborhood that completely adores issues like chickens (opens in new tab) and “door caught!” tattoos (opens in new tab) as a lot because the genuinely nice moments (opens in new tab). So come on in: The Mud’s pretty (opens in new tab).
