Counter Strike

Counter-Strike (shortened sometimes to CS) is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe. The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero,Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Anthology and Counter-Strike on Xbox. Counter-Strike pits a team ofcounter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won by either completing the mission objective or eliminating the opposing force.

The game is currently the most played Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy.^[2

When Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Entertainment/Vivendi Universal Games, it was bundled with Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force multiplayer, and the Wanted, Redemption and Firearms mods."^[5]

On 24 March 1999^{[verification needed]} Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits. On June 19, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strikedevelopers and Valve had teamed up.

The non-beta release dates of Counter-Strike are as follows^[6]:

• Version 1.0: November 1, 2000
• Version 1.1: March 13, 2001
• Version 1.3: September 12, 2001
• Version 1.4: April 24, 2002
• Version 1.5: June 12, 2002
• Version 1.6: September 15, 2003

Note: Version 1.6 effectively coincided with the release of Valve Software's Steam content delivery system. All further updates and bug fixes have been dynamically delivered via Steam, without any specific new version numbers.

On January 25, 2003, a world wide competition was held by Valve and hosted by Dell. Numerous Dell desktops and laptops were awarded in the competition which attracted over 10,000 participants. The competition was held over a two week period, with the winners "b0b" and "jsrawr" being announced on February 15 on Valve's website.^{[citation needed]}

On March 20, 2004, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was released. It contained a single player campaign and bots, as well as other changes.

Counter-Strike received a major technology update and refresh on November 1, 2004 with the release of Counter-Strike: Source, which was heavily updated usingValve's Source game engine to take advantage of more modern graphics and audio hardware. However, the original Counter-Strike is still available and played by many people via Steam, as the two variants are quite different, and players inevitably prefer one variant over the other. Both versions continue to co-exist today.

Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,^[7] forcing players to switch to Steam. The non-Steam version of Counter-Strike (version 1.5) can still be downloaded from sites such as FilePlanet.^[8] Due to the closure of WON, part of the player community responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2.^{[citation needed]}

In March 2007, Valve implemented mandatory advertisements through Steam in official maps and in the game's GUI overhead. Customers have expressed frustration with the ads, including an over 200 page thread on Valve's official forums, saying that they violate original terms of service and distract from the game.^[9]The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator.

Main article: Counter-Strike Online

As of February 2008, Counter-Strike Online is only available in South Korea and is now in open beta test. It is being developed by Nexon Corporation with oversight from license-holder Valve Corporation, and is an attempt to increase market share of Valve's games in the Korean gaming market.