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Counter-Strike (also known as Half-Life: Counter-Strike or Counter-Strike 1.6) is a 2000 tactical first-person shooter game developed by Valve. It was initially developed and released as a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe in 1999, before Le and Cliffe were hired and the game's intellectual property acquired. Counter-Strike was released by Valve for Microsoft Windows in November 2000, and is the first installment in the Counter-Strike series. Several remakes and ports were released on Xbox, as well as OS X and Linux.

Set in various locations around the globe, players assume the roles of counter-terrorist forces and terrorist militants opposing them. During each round of gameplay, the two teams are tasked with defeating the other by the means of either achieving the map's objectives or eliminating all of the enemy combatants. Each player may customize their arsenal of weapons and accessories at the beginning of every match, with currency being earned after the end of each round.

Gameplay
Counter-Strike is a team-based multiplayer first-person shooter video game in which players can join either the terrorists (T) or the counter-terrorists (CT). The game is played on a specific collection of "maps," each of which is essentially a stand-alone three-dimensional virtual world. If one team has more players than the other, the server settings may automatically balance. Each game begins with both teams spawning simultaneously as one of eight possible default character models (four each for counter-terrorist and terrorist). Each player begins with $800, two magazines of ammo, a knife, and a handgun, often a Heckler & Koch USP for the counter-terrorists or a Glock 18c for the terrorists. Players are usually allowed a few seconds before the round starts, known as freeze time to purchase equipment but not move. Players may purchase equipment whenever they are in a buy zone for their team, some of which can be shared by both sides and the round has not been in session for more than a certain duration, which is 90 seconds by default. Surviving players keep their equipment for the following game, while those who die start again with a handgun and knife.

The scoreboard displays team results as well as information about each player, including their name, score, deaths, and ping/latency (ms) on the map, it also displays if each player is dead, carrying a bomb (in bomb defusal maps), or a VIP (in assassination maps), albeit the player must be killed during the round to gain this information about opposing team members. Players that are killed become "ghosts" for the rest of the round; they are unable to alter their names or receive chat/voice messages from live players, unless the CVAR command sv_alltalk is set to 1. They may typically watch the rest of the round from a variety of chosen observer modes (free-look mode, locked chasecam and free chase chasecam), but some servers limit some of these views to prevent dead players from conveying information about surviving players to their teammates via alternate media (most notably voice in Internet cafés). Many players believe the practice known as "ghosting" to be cheating. Players receive standard bonuses, such as $3500 for winning a round, $1500 for losing one, and $300 for killing an enemy. They can have up to $16000 via earning and can be fined (e.g killing a teammate fines the perpetrator $3300).

Currently, there are three objectives depending on the map:
 * Bomb defusal: One terrorist has a bomb when they start the round. The goal of the terrorists is to plant the bomb at a bomb site—usually Bombsite A or Bombsite B on a map—and make sure it explodes. The team that survives wins if the bomb hasn't been set and every member of one team has been eliminated. The Terrorists win if the bomb is planted and detonates; however, the counter-terrorists win if the bomb is defused, however they can buy an optional kit to expedite the defusal process). The counter-terrorists lose when the round timer goes off. The player's death count is not increased by bomb explosion deaths. Maps start with the prefix "de_" (e.g de_dust2).
 * Hostage rescue: Four hostages are often located close to the terrorist base on the map. The goal of the Counter-Terrorists is to lead the captives to a location on the map where they are rescued. A team wins if every member of that team has been eliminated. The Counter-Terrorists win and get $2400 for each captive that survives, provided that the number of rescued hostages is at least half of the original hostage count. The terrorists win when the round ends. Maps with this objective start with the prefix "cs_" (e.g cs_office).
 * Assassination: In this objective, one Counter-Terrorist member becomes into a VIP, armed with 200 units of Kevlar vest and nothing more than the counter-terrorist standard-issue USP handgun and one additional magazine. Except for their own handgun, the VIP is not permitted to retrieve dropped firearms. The VIP's goal is to get at an extraction zone (1, typically), when the counter-terrorists triumph. The terrorists win if the VIP dies. The counter-terrorists win if every terrorist dies. The terrorists win when time runs out. A VIP shouldn't expect to escape without the team's help due to the gun's shortage of ammo, but the unique armour and the pistol together offer sufficient protection.

Formerly, there was a fourth objective called Escape. The scenario is that the terrorist team must "escape" to one of the designated escape points after beginning their mission in a protected area. Before they can flee, the counter-terrorist team needs to kill them. Once half of the team has managed to escape, the terrorists win the round. Following each of the eight rounds of play, the two sides will trade roles. If one team eliminates the other, both teams can also win the scenario.

Three categories exist for weapons: Melee (knife), Secondary (handguns), and Primary (rifles, shotguns, machine and submachine guns). There is a separate category for equipment like defusing kits and hand grenades. With the exception of equipment, which may hold many items at once, players are only allowed to carry one item in each of these categories at a time.

Many movies served as sources of inspiration for prospective weapon candidates. For instance, the Krieg 552 and M249 were included because of inspiration from the 1998 film Ronin. The movies Air Force One and Léon: the Professional. served as additional sources of inspiration. Gun magazines or the internet provided the majority of the information about the actual firearms. A few weapon models deviate from their real-world equivalents because Minh Le had to make assumptions about how some weapons would have worked when animating them due to the paucity of information available about them. The weapons needed to look and sound well, and they needed to be satisfying to use. Realisticness and the kinds of weapons the groups would probably use in the actual world were the other factors. The prioritization of the former above the latter in terms of establishing authenticity. One notable characteristic of Counter-Strike is its left-handed weapon view models. Because Minh Le, the main developer of Counter-Strike, is left-handed and preferred animating weapons from the left side, these models were built to be left-handed.

Development
Minh Le has been previously involved with developing mods in the form of Navy SEALs for Quake and Action Quake 2. However, he felt that he wanted more control over development and thus decided to start development on his own mod. As Le had already used the Quake and Quake 2 engines when working on previous mods, he felt that using the Half-Life engine was a logical progression. The fact that Half-Life was based on a realistic setting helped sell the idea that it would be the most suitable for his concept of a realistic mod pitting terrorists against counter-terrorists. Initial development started in January 1999. As the Half-Life SDK had yet to be released, it was not possible to create actual mods at the time so Minh started out by creating new weapon and player models. In February, the first ever screenshots of what would become Counter-Strike were released coinciding with the first interview regarding the mod. Minh Le knew Jess Cliffe from before as they had both been involved with Action Quake 2. During an IRC chat, Le casually mentioned the fact that he was going to create his own mod. Cliffe was excited by the theme of the mod and offered to create a website for it, which is how he got involved with the mod.

On March 15, 1999 the mod would receive its name following an ICQ chat between Le and Cliffe. Le suggested names based on his favorite TV shows and movies. Suggested names included Counterrorism, Counter-Strike, Strike Force, FRAG HEADS, Counter-Terror, Terrorist wars, Terror-Force, and Counter Force. They eventually mutually agreed that Counter-Strike sounded the best, thus it became the name of the mod. Later that month, on March 24, the official Counter-Strike website was also launched. When the Half-Life SDK was released on April 7, 1999 it finally became possible to create actual mods for the game and actual coding on the mod started later that month. Despite the mod not yet being released, Minh's reputation from his previous work on Action Quake 2 lead to considerable interest regarding the mod and only a few weeks after the official website had been launched it would receive its 10,000th visitor.

By the time May came around, the most urgent problem the mod was facing was the lack of mappers. Cliffe had posted several requests for mappers on the official website but the response had been quite meager. Thus, Cliffe resorted to contacting various Half-Life mappers directly. While the exact extent of this spree is not known, it has been suggested that Jess contacted pretty much everyone who had ever submitted a map to Radium (an old website for releasing custom Half-Life maps). The maps for the initial beta release of the game were to be chosen in a contest type of setting where the Counter-Strike Team picked the best maps out of all maps that had been submitted for the game. It is not known how many maps were actually completed by the time maps were to be chosen for the initial beta, but it would seem there was quite a limited choice. However, at least two maps were mentioned that didn't ever see the light of day (a factory and a bunker map ) which suggests that some maps were discarded based on the outcome of this contest.

Before the first beta had even been released, a pre-beta was leaked and started circulating around the web. It has been suggested that the initial beta release was rushed as a result of this, likely to prevent people from getting a negative impression of the mod by playing the early leaked build. The first beta was eventually released on June 19, 1999 featuring the hostage rescue scenario, an arsenal of 9 weapons, 4 maps and one player model for each side. According to Jess Cliffe, the release was well received by the community. The two next releases (Beta 2 and Beta 3) would be released about a month apart. They mostly introduced new weapons, maps and factions. Beta 3 introduced a change which caused a lot of controversy, namely frags were removed from the scoreboard altogether. This was possibly done to strengthen the team play spirit, but the change was gradually reverted in future releases due to received negative feedback. The bomb defusal scenario was the new big thing in Beta 4.0. Shortly before its release, Cliffe was encouraging designers that were working on maps to utilize the new scenario instead of hostage rescue. When the new beta was released, it also introduced another new feature that allowed for more interesting map design - many entities would now be reset at the start of the round (which meant that things like breakable glass would respawn each round). At the same time this meant the end for an infamous tactic called gun-running, where players would stack weapons on the ground around their spawn before the end of a round as they could be picked up at the start of the next round.

In late 1999, Minh Le started working at Barking Dog Studios while he was still finishing his studies. When Valve Software became aware of this, they asked if Barking Dog was interested in developing Beta 5. Valve offered to finance this development to show gratitude to the Half-Life community and mod developers. Barking Dog Studios agreed, and they would do most (around 90%) of the work for the next beta as Le was very busy with university studies at that time. They made many bug fixes and also generally cleaned up the code. Additionally, the game play of the hostage rescue and bomb defusal scenarios was made a lot more straightforward. The interface was also worked on by artist Cory Lake in an attempt to make it look more consistent. Valve Software also became more directly involved and would provide some coding help and contribute the new hostage models for the release. Barking Dog Studios also helped out in the development of the following patch, Beta 5.2. Two new scenarios, assassination and escape, would be introduced with Beta 6.0. While the assassination scenario would enjoy moderate success, the escape scenario would eventually get phased out from the mod altogether.

Release
On April 12, 2000 it was officially announced that Valve Software and the Counter-Strike Team had entered a partnership and that Counter-Strike 1.0 would be included in an upcoming Half-Life patch. While not stated in the release, it is commonly believed that this statement was issued following the rights to Counter-Strike being purchased by Valve. Later statements indicate that money was involved in a deal made it early 2000, supporting the theory that the rights were sold at this point. Following this statement, two major beta releases would still be issued. Beta 6.5 was mainly released to introduce the updated netcode that Valve Software had written for the Half-Life engine. The last major beta release, Beta 7.0, saw the introduction of driveable vehicle support.

In addition to being made accessible as a Half-Life mod, Counter-Strike was set to launch as a retail product on August 31, 2000. It was decided to distribute the game as a retail product since it was thought that this would increase its accessibility. Another goal of Valve Software was to see how the market would respond to a multiplayer game that didn't require Half-Life.

Various legal difficulties have to be resolved in light of the upcoming retail release. The naming of the weapons was one of these problems. To get around legal problems, they took on fictitious names. To get the rights to the maps and graphics, Valve Software had to negotiate with each level designer and artist in addition to just purchasing the game's licence. Maps for the retail version had to be altered after it was discovered that several textures had questionable provenance and had to be redone or censored. Valve chose to include only a portion of the maps in the retail version, contrary to Minh Le's wish that all of the levels would have been included. Minh Le chose to pay back the creators of the maps that Valve did not buy out of his own money, even though he was under no legal requirement to do so. Naturally, the new version of the game would also feature new content. Three new weapons were modeled for the release by Minh Le. Also, all new player models were provided by Valve Software. Maverick Developments was also contracted to produce a training map for the retail version of the game. In October it was stated that the mod version of the game would be released as soon as the retail version had gone gold. On November 9, 2000 it was announced that the retail release had gone gold, thus the mod version was released. The retail version appeared on store shelves in North America on November 14, 2000. When Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Studios, it was bundled with Team Fortress Classic, Opposing Force multiplayer, and the Wanted, Half-Life: Absolute Redemption and Firearms mods.

Post-release
After the game was released in full, different patches were made available, much like in the beta stages. With Valve now participating, upgrades requiring significant engine modifications were also feasible. This featured the addition of voice-over communications in version 1.3, anti-cheating technologies in version 1.4, and a completely new spectator mode in version 1.1. The last version of Counter-Strike to be made available as a separately downloaded patch prior to the game's transition to Steam was version 1.5, which was published on June 12, 2002.

Early in the closed beta testing phase of both Counter-Strike 1.4 and the content delivery network in early 2002, Counter-Strike has previously been featured on Steam. Public participation in this beta testing began in March 2002. Nevertheless, at this point, Steam was only being used for beta testing; there were no plans to release the game itself through Steam. Originally, Valve planned to release the game on Steam together with Counter-Strike 1.5, however due to unforeseen circumstances, the Steam release had to wait until Counter-Strike 1.6. The announcement that Counter-Strike 1.6 will first be released on Steam and that a beta test would take place before the official release was announced in October 2002. The original plan was for public beta testing to start in mid-November, however this was first pushed back to mid-December, and testing didn't start until 16 January 2003. However, the Steam servers immediately ran out of bandwidth owing to the excessive demand, and future beta admissions were halted. On February 11, 2003, Steam and the Counter-Strike 1.6 beta were once more made available to the general public. During this beta test, the game would receive many updates, and Counter-Strike 1.6 would see the addition of new weapons and a brand-new interface built on Valve Software's VGUI2 technology. Between June 5, 2003, and September 9, 2003, the public beta tested the official bot that Turtle Rock Studios was developing for Counter-Strike: Condition Zero in Counter-Strike 1.6. On September 9, 2003, the public beta testing phase came to an end after more than six months. The final version of Counter-Strike 1.6 was originally scheduled to be released the very next day, but due to last-minute revisions to the Steam network, it took longer than anticipated. As a result, the Steam client and the game were released simultaneously on September 12, 2003. The version number is now frequently used as a title to distinguish the original game from the other games in the series. Counter-Strike 1.6 turned out to be the final significant content update for the game. Numerous minor updates have been made to Steam since its launch, bringing bug repairs, exploit updates, and minor balancing adjustments. The online communities of Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Condition Zero were supposed to combine into one, but that update—Counter-Strike 1.7—was never made available.

In 2007 an update was introduced that caused quite a lot of controversy even before its introduction: in-game advertisements. Despite the negative reaction by the community, these advertisements would go on to decorate parts of the interface and the walls of some maps for a period of six years before they were eventually removed in 2013 when Counter-Strike was transferred over to the SteamPipe content delivery system.

On January 23, 2013, a beta of the game was made available for Linux and Mac OS X and on February 14, 2013 support for these platforms was officially released.

Critical reception
Upon its retail release, Counter-Strike received highly favorable reviews. In 2003, Counter-Strike was inducted into GameSpot's list of the greatest games of all time. The New York Times reported that E-Sports Entertainment ESEA League started the first professional fantasy e-sports league in 2004 with the game Counter-Strike. Some credit the move into professional competitive team play with prizes as a major factor in Counter-Strike longevity and success. Reviewers praised the teamplay and social aspects of the game. Scott Osbourne of GameSpot thought the round based gameplay allowed chatting dead players forming a sense of tension. Clayton Wolfe of IGN thought that successful teamplay was the recipe for ensuring a victory for ones team. At Computer Games Magazine, Bill Hiles stated that "teamwork is crucial for success" and noted that better players utilized coordinated team efforts to succeed in the game.

Journalists were torn on the graphical side of the game. Osbourne stated that "the Half-Life graphics engine may be dated now, but Counter-Strike has always used it to its fullest potential" and thought the new player model graphics were especially good. Wolfe stated that "visually the game will not disappoint" even though the Half-Life engine was dated and thought the environmental textures looked "realistic enough". Watson however thought the game had a noticeably dated look, stating that "no amount of tweaking can disguise the fact that this engine is based on a two-year-old core, and a facelift would really work wonders".

The weapon sound effects were well received by Osbourne, Wolfe and Watson. Scott Osbourne thought "the guns sound remarkably realistic and powerful, which makes them viscerally fun to shoot". IGN editor Wolfe concluded that "the realistic guns sounds are spot on". Watson thought the sound effects in overall were on par or superior to other games on the market. However, Wolfe thought that the other sound effects used sounded wimpy and he had hoped for deeper bass and clearer sounds.

Generally, reviewer concluded that the retail release was a good buy for people who didn't own Half-Life or didn't have access to high-speed internet connections. It was also seen as a good release from the point of convenience as everything needed to play the game online was available on a single CD.

Counter-Strike has won various awards. It won the Game Developers Conference Game Spotlight award in 2001. The game was also granted the Game of the Year 2000 title by Gamers.com while Voodoo Extreme gave it the readers choice award. Computer Games Magazine, Game Revolution, Electronic Playground and GameSpot (UK and US) all granted it the award of best online/multiplayer game of 2000.

Sales and player count
The game became the first fan-made video game to be released commercially. Global retail sales of Counter-Strike surpassed 250,000 units by July 2001. In October 2002 the game sold over 1.3 million units. The game sold 1.5 million by February 2003 and generated $40 million in revenue. In August 2004 the game grossed $75 million in revenue with an estimated total of 2 million players worldwide. In the United States, its retail version sold 550,000 copies and earned $15.7 million by August 2006, after its release in November 2000. It was the country's 22nd best-selling PC game between January 2000 and August 2006. The Xbox version sold 1.5 million copies in total. With the exception of Half-Life and its follow-up, Half-Life 2, Counter-Strike has sold around 4.2 million copies more than any other Valve game as of December 3, 2008. The game would go on to be the reason for the success of the homonymous franchise to sell over an estimated total of 25 million copies. A portion of Half-Life's sales are frequently credited to the success of Counter-Strike because the game was also available as a Half-Life modification. Since most video games had a three-month shelf life at the time, Half-Life's sales actually climbed year over year for a few years after its release, which was quite unusual. Gabe Newell attributed this pattern to the popularity of Counter-Strike and thought the release of the mod was the best thing that could have happened to Half-Life.

In 1999, during its beta stages, Counter-Strike accumulated over 116,000 active players with over 22 million minutes played. In March 2000, the game increased its player count to over 245,000, taking first place and surpassing Team Fortress Classic. When it was reaching the end of the beta stages, the game tripled its player count and over 700,000 players were actively playing in October 2000. Over 9000 servers were active for the game in the summer of 2001. After its release, the game topped many lists as the most popular online game. On April 26, 2002, 60,000 copies of Counter-Strike 1.4 were downloaded in a single day, according to the Clubic.com website. In 2004, over 150,000 people were playing simultaneously, monthly generating over 6 billion player minutes. The game also generated 85% of internet traffic, more than the internet traffic in Italy. GameSpy recorded an average of 85,000 concurrent players in 2007, which accounted for 35% of all online first-person shooter gamers. The total number of players across all Counter-Strike games was about 167,471, or 67% of all first-person shooters online. Since then, the number of players has varied between 150,000 and 300,000 at any given time of day, according to statistics released by Valve, averaging 3 million unique users each month. The number of servers also ranges between 100,000 and 150,000. In 2008, the game had an estimated total of 2.5 million players, averaging 85,000 players daily. Early in 2009, the game lost its top ranking among online first-person shooters to Counter-Strike: Source, which was remade and had an average of 30,000 players in real time as opposed to 35,000 for the original game. In 2015, 15 years after the release of the game, the game frequented the top 25 games played on Steam list and its longevity has outlasted both Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Source. In 2015, it had more than 3 million regular users, indicating that it was still a popular game.

Brazilian sale ban
On January 17, 2008, a Brazilian federal court order prohibiting all sales of Counter-Strike and EverQuest began to be enforced. The federal Brazilian judge Carlos Alberto Simões de Tomaz ordered the ban in October 2007 because, as argued by the judge, the games "bring imminent stimulus to the subversion of the social order, attempting against the democratic state and the law and against public security." As of June 18, 2009, a regional federal court order lifting the prohibition on the sale of Counter-Strike was published. The game is now being sold again in Brazil.

Counter-Strike has received generally favorable reviews, scoring an average of 88/100 and 89/100 on the aggregator sites Metacritic and GameRankings respectively.

Counter-Strike is considered one of the most influential multiplayer games of all time. The game is also attributed to having pushed the competitive gaming movement forward. It has also been reported that Counter-Strike was the first game for which a fantasy league was started.

Competitive play
The original Counter-Strike has been played in tournaments since 2000 with the first major being hosted in 2001 at the Cyberathlete Professional League Winter Championship. The CPL announced it would be switching from Quake III Arena to Counter-Strike for the Winter Championship Event. The 2000 Babbage's Event featured a Counter-Strike competition sponsored by Kärna, the parent company of Razer, with a prize money of $15,000. The winning teams were supposed to get their prize cheques on February 27, 2001. However, Karna reported that the company was having financial issues and that this would cause the prize payout to be delayed. The following announcement was made on March 14th, after the checks had still not arrived due to Karna experiencing financial difficulties. The CPL stipulates that the league will make alternative arrangements for winners to get their awards if Karna's contributions are not received by April 2, 2001. A large group of people patiently awaited the on-site check-in process on April 12, 2001, outside Marsalis Hall of the Hyatt Regency in downtown Dallas. The known characters of Quake professional play were noticeably absent, and the crowd was made up of fresh faces. With great anticipation, the Counter-Strike community registered 48 teams online and brought 48 teams to compete in the first-ever Counter-Strike event. Over 800 persons in all, including competitors and BYOC attendees, were anticipated. This event, which at the time was the biggest Counter-Strike competition ever held globally, would usher in a new age in professional gaming. The Esports World Convention took place in 2003, with 37 teams competing for a $100,000 prize.

The first official sequel was Counter-Strike: Source, released on November 1, 2004. The game was criticized by the competitive community, who believed the game's skill ceiling was significantly lower than that of CS 1.6. This caused a divide in the competitive community as to which game to play competitively.

Sequels
Following the success of the first Counter-Strike, Valve went on to make multiple sequels to the game. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, a game using Counter-Strike's GoldSrc engine, was released in 2004. Counter-Strike: Source, a remake of the original Counter-Strike, was the first in the series to use Valve's Source engine and was also released in 2004, eight months after the release of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. The next game in the Counter-Strike series to be developed primarily by Valve was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, released for Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2012.

The game spawned multiple spin-offs for the Asian gaming market. The first, Counter-Strike Neo, was an arcade game developed by Namco and released in Japan in 2003. In 2008, Nexon Corporation released Counter-Strike Online, a free-to-play instalment in the series monetized via microtransactions. Counter-Strike Online was followed by Counter-Strike Online 2 in 2013. In 2014, Nexon released Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies worldwide via Steam.