50 Fun Facts About Counter-Strike

Which programmer, nicknamed 'Gooseman', co-created the original Counter-Strike mod?

Minh Le built the mod in his fourth year at university, giving it about 20 hours a week, more effort than he put into his coursework.

Counter-Strike began as a mod for which game?

Half-Life kept selling better year after year, which was almost unheard of; Gabe Newell credited the mod and called it one of the best things that could have happened to the game.

What did Valve change for legal reasons before Counter-Strike's 2000 retail release?

Weapon names were swapped for made-up ones to head off legal trouble, which is why the SG 552 rifle is sold in-game as the Krieg 552.

Which studio finished Condition Zero, released in March 2004, after three other developers had tried?

Turtle Rock Studios got the troubled project after impressing Valve with its official Counter-Strike bot; the small team went on to create Left 4 Dead.

Ritual Entertainment's earlier version of Condition Zero shipped alongside it under what name?

Deleted Scenes is a 12-mission single-player campaign: when another studio took the game over, Ritual's work was expected to be scrapped, then salvaged as a bonus.

Which 2004 title was the first game Valve publicly released on its then-new engine?

Counter-Strike: Source reached players on October 7, 2004, more than a month before the flagship single-player game the engine had been built for.

CS:GO launched in 2012 on Windows, OS X, Xbox 360 and which other console?

PlayStation 3 players could even plug in a mouse and keyboard, but plans for cross-play with PC were dropped so the computer versions could be updated more often.

Which studio co-developed CS:GO with Valve?

Hidden Path Entertainment began the project in 2010 as a console port of the previous game; Valve saw a chance to expand the series and turned it into a full sequel.

Which platform, supported by CS:GO, was left behind when Counter-Strike 2 replaced it in 2023?

Mac support ended on September 27, 2023, when Counter-Strike 2 replaced the old game outright; 32-bit systems and DirectX 9 hardware were cut loose the same day.

Which game engine powers Counter-Strike 2?

Source 2 makes smoke grenades volumetric: the cloud now fills the space it lands in, and bullets or an explosion can punch gaps in it.

Which Japanese arcade adaptation of Counter-Strike did Namco publish for Linux-based cabinets?

Counter-Strike Neo dropped the terrorists altogether: Namco feared the theme would put Japanese players off, so two invented factions, CSF and NEO, fight it out as anime-styled characters.

Which company developed the free-to-play Counter-Strike Online for eastern Asia?

Nexon, a South Korean publisher, built the game around micropayments under Valve's oversight: most weapons start locked and are bought or rented with points.

Which organisation hosted the first major Counter-Strike tournament in 2001?

Cyberathlete Professional League organisers dropped Quake III Arena as their championship game in favour of Counter-Strike, and Sweden's Ninjas in Pyjamas won the Dallas event that December.

How much money does each player start with in the original Counter-Strike?

$800 stretches to armor or a better pistol but never a rifle, which is why the opening round of each half is known as the pistol round.

What is the maximum amount of money a player can hold in the original Counter-Strike?

$16,000 is the most a player can bank. With every kill paying $300, a side on a winning run soon hits the cap, and anything earned beyond it is simply lost.

Which handgun do Counter-Terrorists start with in the original game?

USP pistols stayed the Counter-Terrorists' spawn sidearm until CS:GO swapped them for the P2000 in 2012; a silenced successor, the USP-S, followed a year later.

Bomb defusal maps carry which filename prefix?

de_ marks a bomb-defusal map, cs_ a hostage map and as_ an assassination map, which is how de_dust2 and cs_office got their names.

In the Assassination scenario, what role did one Counter-Terrorist take on?

VIP status brings double armor but only a pistol, with no buying or picking up anything else; if he dies or fails to reach the escape zone in time, the Terrorists win.

Which Counter-Strike map is set on a skyscraper still under construction?

Vertigo is fought across the open upper floors of an unfinished tower, where a careless step sends a player over the edge; it took Cache's place in the competitive map pool in 2019.

Which 1998 film inspired Counter-Strike's makers to add the Krieg 552 and the M249?

Ronin 'rocked', the mod's lead designer said, and it sent him off to model two of its guns; Air Force One and Léon: The Professional fed the arsenal too.

Counter-Strike's lead designer enjoyed which earlier tactical shooter but found its pace 'a bit too painful'?

Rainbow Six was enjoyable but too slow for him, and he missed seeing his own gun on screen, so he set out to make something faster and more immersive.

The first Counter-Strike beta, in June 1999, shipped with which single scenario?

Hostage rescue was the only scenario in the first beta, which had nine weapons and four maps; bomb defusal, the mode that later took over, was added months afterwards.

Which Swedish gaming festival hosted the first Valve-sponsored Counter-Strike Major in 2013?

DreamHack Winter 2013 in Jönköping offered a $250,000 prize pool, and home side Fnatic upset Ninjas in Pyjamas in an all-Swedish final.

Barking Dog Studios, which built most of Counter-Strike's Beta 5, later became a Rockstar studio and made which game?

Bully came out in 2006, four years after Take-Two bought the Vancouver team; in 1999 it had taken on the beta because the mod's designer, then its employee, was busy finishing university.

Which rifle in the original Counter-Strike's buy menu is sold only to the Counter-Terrorists?

M4A1s are Counter-Terrorist-only, with the AK-47 as the Terrorists' answer, so the other side can use one only by picking up a rifle an enemy has dropped.

Counter-Strike 1.6 launched in September 2003 alongside which new platform?

Steam and version 1.6 went live together. When the beta had opened that January, demand was so heavy that the servers ran out of bandwidth and sign-ups were halted the same day.

A federal judge in which country ordered a ban on sales of Counter-Strike in 2007?

Brazil's ban, which also covered EverQuest, took effect in January 2008 and held until a regional court lifted it in June 2009.

What did CS:GO become in December 2018, six years after launch?

Free to play is what it became on December 6, 2018. Players who had already paid were given Prime status, and a battle-royale mode arrived in the same update.

What was CS:GO's battle-royale mode called?

Danger Zone dropped up to 18 players into a shrinking arena with tablets for tracking rivals and ordering gear; it did not survive the move to Counter-Strike 2.

Which August 2013 update added weapon skins to CS:GO?

Arms Deal introduced cases opened with paid keys. Until then CS:GO had not even been the most-played Counter-Strike, and its player numbers took off afterwards.

CS:GO's version of the 'Gun Game' mode is called what?

Arms Race swaps a player's weapon after every couple of kills and is won with a golden knife; it was missing when Counter-Strike 2 launched and came back in a 2024 update.

Which CS:GO mode pits two players against two?

Wingman is a best of sixteen rounds on cut-down maps with one bombsite, and it keeps its own skill groups, so a player's two-on-two rank can differ from their five-a-side one.

What did players need to join Prime matchmaking when it launched in April 2016?

A verified phone number could be tied to only one account, which made it costly for banned cheaters and 'smurfs' on spare accounts to get back in among legitimate players.

Which publisher, already Dota 2's operator in China, brought CS:GO to the mainland in September 2017?

Perfect World gives the game free to players who verify their identity; its Chinese build censors skulls and removed the hammer and sickle from the maps Cache and Train.

The Flying Scoutsman mode equips players with a knife and which rifle?

SSG 08 rifles, the light snipers players call the Scout, stay perfectly accurate in mid-air here, so with gravity turned down every duel becomes a leaping shoot-out.

Which team's core won four Majors together, making it CS:GO's most successful?

Astralis went out of the 2018 Boston Major before the playoffs, signed Emil 'Magisk' Reif weeks later and then won the next three Majors in a row to pass Fnatic's three titles.

Which heavily favoured North American team had four players banned by Valve for throwing a 2014 match?

Team iBUYPOWER lost 16–4 on purpose while an associate bet against them; leaked messages exposed the fix months later, and Valve barred the players involved from its tournaments.

Roughly how much is Valve estimated to have earned from Counter-Strike 2 loot boxes in 2023?

US$1 billion is the estimate for 2023: players opened about 400 million cases, each needing a paid key, and Valve also takes a cut when cases are resold.

Which map did Valve rebuild from the ground up as an 'Overhaul' for Counter-Strike 2?

Overpass, the German park map, was rebuilt completely, while Dust II was deliberately left almost untouched so players had a familiar yardstick for judging the new game's changes.

Who designed Dust II?

David Johnston, unusually for him, planned the layout on paper first, then turned the doodles into a playable map in a couple of days.

Which working title did the creator of de_dust2 first give the map?

Dust 3 was a hedge: third instalments are never as good as the first, he reasoned, so nobody would expect much. It got its real name on joining the official map rotation.

Which player was ranked number one in the world by HLTV in 2018, 2021 and 2022?

s1mple spent most of his career at Natus Vincere and won his first Major with them in Stockholm in 2021, where the team did not drop a map and he was named MVP.

Which organisation became the first North American team to win a CS:GO Major, in Boston in 2018?

Cloud9 were outsiders all the way: they upset G2 Esports and SK Gaming in the playoffs, then beat the tournament favourites FaZe Clan in the final.

Which Terrorist faction was the only T model available when Counter-Strike's 2004 remake launched?

Phoenix Connexion, the series' oldest Terrorist faction, stood alone against SEAL Team 6 at launch; the other classic player models took until 2006 to return.

The original Counter-Strike reached which console in 2003, with online play as its main draw?

Xbox owners got it in November 2003, and reviewers called Xbox Live the best reason to buy it; after Microsoft closed that service in 2010, fans revived online play on replacement servers.

In Counter-Strike, what does the abbreviation VAC stand for?

Valve Anti-Cheat arrived with Counter-Strike in 2002. Its bans are permanent and non-negotiable, and a recent one also bars a player from Valve-sponsored tournaments.

Counter-Strike 2's new server architecture is marketed under what name?

Sub-tick servers record the exact instant between ticks at which a player fires or moves, so in principle a shot lands the same whatever the server's tick rate.

Which Left 4 Dead composer wrote new music for Counter-Strike 2?

Mike Morasky came to game music from film: he worked on visual effects for the Lord of the Rings and Matrix trilogies before scoring Valve's games.

What did Valve call the hidden 2017 matchmaking score built from in-game and account-wide behaviour?

Trust Factor was meant to reunite a player base that Prime matchmaking had split in two; Valve never shows players their score or the full list of factors behind it.

Which Counter-Strike community mod has players finish obstacle courses with advanced strafing and jumping?

Kreedz Climbing, KZ for short, is a race against the clock that one record holder calls 'parkour for CS:GO'; on many maps simply reaching the finish is an achievement.