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Counter-Strike
Developer	Valve Software
Publisher	Vivendi Universal (PC) Microsoft Game Studios (Xbox)
Engine	GoldSrc (Half-Life)
Released	June 12, 1999 (1999-06-12) (Original Half-Life Mod) November 8, 2000 (PC) March 25, 2004 (Xbox)
Genre	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Ratings	ESRB: Mature 17+ ELSPA: 14+
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows and Xbox
Media	CD or Steam download
System requirements	500 MHz processor, 96 MB RAM
Input methods	Keyboard, mouse

Counter-Strike (commonly abbreviated to CS) is a tactical first-person shooter video game 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 of counter-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 latest incarnation of the game, Counter-Strike: Source, is based on the Source engine developed for Half-Life 2.

The game has both individual and multiplayer options. Bots can be added into the game. The online-multiplayer option is activated via Steam.

"Counter-Strike" was developed first as a Half-Life modification. Therefore named "Half-Life: Counter-Strike." The original version was a 3rd-party Half-Life modification, but since then it has grown into a commercial mod and later advertised as separate game in itself. It is sometimes mistaken that Counter-Strike has no relation to Half-Life now that it is in a more commercial form and no longer referred to as "Half-Life: Counter-Strike" but "Counter-Strike." "Counter-Strike" is still using and running off of the Half-Life game engine and is based off of its unchanged structure. The kernel of the engine maintains the same throughout all of the current commercial Half-Life modifications. (Day of Defeat, Team Fortress Classic (not to be confused with original teamfortress running on Quake1, which half-life itself is based on), et cetera)

Contents 1 Version history 1.1 Condition Zero 1.2 Source 2 Distribution and service 2.1 Sierra 2.2 Steam and the WON gaming service 2.3 Addition of in-game advertising 3 Gameplay 3.1 Player skins 3.2 Maps 4 Weapons 4.1 Depiction of real weapons 4.2 Usage 5 Culture 6 Legacy 7 Mods and scripts 8 Cheating 9 In popular culture 10 Notes and references 11 See also 12 External links

This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can (November 2007).

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 18, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. Counter-Strike 1.0 was released around Christmas 2000.

On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up.

Main article: Counter-Strike: Condition Zero

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

Main article: Counter-Strike: Source

Also in 2004, Counter-Strike: Source was released, bundled with Half-Life 2. It ported the original Counter-Strike to the Source engine.

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."^[1]

Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004,^[2] 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.^[3] Due to the closure of WON, part of the player community responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2. The average Player Minutes/Month is 7.634 billion which equals 127,233,333 hours of gameplay.

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.^[4] The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator.

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist or counter-terrorist team. Each team attempts to complete their mission objective and/or eliminate the opposing team. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously, usually at opposite ends of the map from each other. A player can choose to play as one of eight different default character models (four for each side, although Counter-Strike: Condition Zero added two extra models, bringing the total to ten). Each player generally starts with $800 (although this amount can be modified), two magazines of ammunition, a knife, and a pistol: a Heckler & Koch USP45 Tactical for counter-terrorists, and a Glock 18 for terrorists. Players are generally given a few seconds before the round begins (known as "freeze time") to prepare and buy equipment, during which they cannot attack, be attacked, or walk/move. They can return to the buy area within a set amount of time (90 seconds is the default) to buy more equipment (some neutral "buy zones" can be used by both teams). Once the round has ended, surviving players retain their equipment for use in the next round; players who were killed begin the next round with the basic default starting equipment.

Standard monetary bonuses are awarded for winning a round, losing a round, killing an enemy, instructing a hostage to follow, rescuing a hostage or planting the bomb.

The scoreboard displays team scores in addition to statistics for each player: name, score (kills), deaths, and ping (in milliseconds). The scoreboard also indicates whether a player is dead, carrying the bomb (on bomb maps), or is the VIP (on assassination maps), although information on players on the opposing team is hidden from a player until his/her death, as this information can be important. Killed players become "ghosts" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names until they spawn (come alive) again, text chat cannot be sent to or received from live players; and voice chat can only be received from live players and not sent to them (unless the cvar sv_alltalk is set to 1). Ghosts are generally able to watch the rest of the round from multiple selectable views, although some servers disable some of these views to prevent dead players from relaying information about living players to their teammates through alternative media (most notably voice in the case of Internet cafes and Voice over IP programs such as TeamSpeak or Ventrilo). This technique, known as "ghosting", is considered cheating in many tactical shooters.

Before a player may join a match, he or she must first choose a faction (either Counter-Terrorist (CT) or Terrorist (T)) and select one of the following player model skins, a visual representation of the player in-game.

Counter-Terrorists: Counter-terrorist player skins are based on real-world international counter-terrorist forces.

• SEAL Team 6 (DEVGRU) – Counter-terrorist unit of the United States of America. Olive drab camouflage, suitable for woodland maps.
• GSG 9 – Counter-terrorist unit of Germany. Cerulean uniform with desert camouflage helmet. Camouflage suitable for urban maps.
• SAS – Counter-terrorist unit of the United Kingdom. Black camouflage and gas mask, suitable for any dark areas or night-time maps.
• GIGN – Counter-terrorist unit of France. Navy blue uniform, suitable for urban maps.
• SpetsNaz – Counter-terrorist unit of the Russian Federation. This skin is only available in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Terrorists: Terrorist player skins are based on fictitious terrorist cells.

• Phoenix Connection – Terrorist cell formed out of the former Soviet Union during its fall. Based in and around Eastern Europe. Dark blue shirt with ski mask and ballistic vest, with urban camouflage trousers. May be mistaken for Counter-terrorist from afar, suitable for urban maps.
• Elite Crew – Mysterious terrorist cell. Claims to have "world domination" as its objective and is based in and around the Middle East. Green jacket, khaki trousers, moderately suitable for desert maps, but more for woodland and jungle maps.
• Arctic Avengers – Terrorist cell based in the Sweden. Winter camouflage, very suitable for snow maps, unsuitable for everything else.
• Guerrilla Warfare – Terrorist cell based in South America and the Middle East. Dressed like a Rambo Impersonator, with a green vest and a red headband, suitable for woodland and jungle maps. May be prone to headshots because of the brightly coloured headband.
• Midwest Militia – Terrorist unit only available in Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

A former terrorist skin was the Provisional Irish Republican Army. The old SEAL was similar to the current GIGN model, though the SEAL had a darker uniform and thicker vest.[1]

The maps in Counter-Strike determine the gameplay and mission objectives. There are three official types of maps in Counter-Strike:

• Hostage rescue maps, identified by "cs" before the name (eg. cs_militia, cs_office), where the counter-terrorist team's objective is to free four non-player characters that are present near the terrorist base
• Bomb defusal maps, identified by "de" before the name, (eg. de_dust, de_aztec), where the terrorist team must try to plant explosives at specific sites in the map and protect it for a set amount of time while the counter-terrorists attempt to defuse it. Counter-terrorists can purchase a kit to cut the bomb defusal time in half.
• Assassination maps, with an "as" prefix, (eg. as_oilrig), in which one member of the counter-terrorist team becomes a VIP, and must be protected from assassination until he reaches an escape zone. This game mode is also present in Counter-Strike: Source, although rarely played.

Terrorist Escape maps were tested in the beta, where the terrorists started in a jail and had to reach a checkpoint within a time limit, finding better weapons along the way. It was discontinued as it gave the counter-terrorist side too much of an advantage. During beta, player-controlled vehicles were tested on a racing map which was also discontinued.

Professional tournaments only involve bomb defusal maps. The Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source map de_dust2 is currently the most played first person shooter map in history.^{[citation needed]}

There are hundreds of unofficial prefixes in Counter-Strike now, including:

• AWP Arena maps, with an "awp" prefix, are small arena-type maps where players fight using Arctic Warfare Magnum Sniper Rifles only. In earlier versions of the game, the weapon was named Arctic Warfare/Police (predator), or AWP for short.
• Frag Yard or Fight Yard or Frenzy maps, identified by "fy" before the name, (eg. fy_iceworld), are also small arena-type maps with various weapons lying around at the spawnpoint. The players must use these weapons to beat the other team, however the weapons have limited ammo. These maps usually have a buy zone somewhere in the middle instead of the spawnpoints, at a fair distance.
• Surfing maps, prefixed with "surf", (eg. surf_legends, surf_graphia), are maps where players use their strafing keys to "surf" special ramps. These maps are sorted into two categories – skill maps where players need extreme skill to complete the map and gun games where shooting each other gets a bigger role. These maps usually have a "jail" where players who fall off go. Those who beat the map often get the privilege to execute the prisoners.
• XC or Extreme Climb This type of map is not a tactical shooter, the goal is to figure out how to maneuver your character further up the map by doing complicated jumps. There are maps that are slotted to be easier than other maps and they come in varying degrees of avg Time. At the top is normally a button that indicated how long a player took to arrive at the summit and displays that time for all to see.
• AIM A map type in which weapons are positioned on the ground prior to round start. Purchasing items is thus a rarity. The map layout is typically symmetrical, resulting in fairest possible gameplay. Standard objectives are nonexistent. As the name suggests, these maps put an emphasis on Aiming skills, as the only objective of the map is to shoot and kill the opponents, no bomb/hostage/vip's.
• GG In the Gun Game (GG) map type, players kill to advance through the weapons, as they are not allowed to purchase anything or pick up dead players weapons. Starting with the cheapest weapon, the Glock 18, players work their way through pistols, shotguns, sum-machine guns, rifles and the machine gun through to the HE grenade and finally the knife. A player who kills with the knife when they are on the 'knife level', as opposed to when they have a gun but are choosing to use the knife, wins that map for the player. Killing with the knife when a player had a gun or grenade avaliable is called 'level stealing' and increases the killers level by one whilst decreases the deseaced's level by one. This is more significant on maps where players are required to make multiple kills to advance a level. Players who are killed are respawed imediatly on most maps, which means that there is a constant stream on players emergin from the spawn point.
• KZ A map based on jumping, these maps are made from Kreedz. Some of these maps require "bunnyhopping" skills and/or "longjumping" skills. Each map has its own difficulty and there is no time limit, but completing the map faster is a good thing.
• ZM A map based on the terrorist being a zombie. The zombieis chosen randomly, and has to use their knife to "swipe" or stab counter-terrorists(non-zombies). The counter-terrorists win if time on the map expires. The zombies win if everyone is turned into a zombie.

Players also have the ability to create their own maps using the Valve Hammer Editor.

One of the features of the original incarnations of Counter-Strike was that it did not feature fictional weapons like most games, instead using only existing firearms used around the world by real terrorist cells, counter-terrorist squads, armed forces, and law enforcement units.

The weapons are, however, only semi-realistic; many of them are incorrect in small details such as the caliber of ammunition or in their naming. Part of the reason for straying from realism is to balance the game; the Glock 18 pistol for instance lacks the auto fire mode as that would have given the player a potent submachine gun, the Five-seveN and P90 lack Kevlar piercing capabilities, the Colt M4A1 Carbine had its scope removed since it was positioned as a closer-range assault rifle in contrast to the Steyr AUG, and SIG 552 is not used by real terrorists because of its high price and inaccuracy due to unrealistic recoil patterns.^{[citation needed]} The Beretta Elite 96G dual pistols (the game incorrectly lists the ammunition as 9 mm instead of .40 S&W) and the Desert Eagle are not practical weapons for special operations and were added as a homage to popular movies.^{[citation needed]}

Others do not operate their firing movement quite as their real-life counterparts do, and many of them are inaccurately 'mirrored', wherein the spent cases are ejected from the wrong side of the weapon. This is attributed to the fact that one of the designers was left-handed, and modeled the weapons being held in the left hand. They were then mirrored to the right side, resulting in these inaccuracies. The Counter-Strike team acknowledges that "not every weapon will be perfectly accurate or realistic".^[5]

Counter-Strike is meant to be more believable than futuristic first-person shooters such as Quake III Arena and Unreal Tournament, but is also built to keep the action flowing faster than more realistic tactical shooters such as the Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon series. Relatively few hits are required to kill a player, and shots to different parts of the body inflict varying amounts of damage. However, damage has no permanent bearing on ability to run or jump, allowing a player with just a few hit points remaining to keep fighting just as well as any other player. Movement and running speed, however, are momentarily restricted for about a second after taking damage from enemy attacks.

When early versions of the mod were released, the weapons were presented in the menus with their actual names and manufacturers such as Colt M4A1 and AK-47, but versions from 1.6 on featured fictional manufacturers (and some models) instead, such as "Maverick M4A1" and "CV-47" respectively. Fictional names had to be made up as the actual weapon names were trademarked by their respective manufacturers. However, the internal names used by the developer's console, key bindings and macros were not changed and thus often preserve the original designations; for example, the "Bullpup" (Steyr AUG) is still named "aug" internally, and so is the M4A1. Players generally ignore the trademark-friendly names and simply refer to the weapons by their internal names.

Players are permitted to carry a pistol as a sidearm and primary weapon, whether it be a shotgun, submachine gun, rifle or machine gun. Shotguns are useful in a handful of maps for ambush situations. Submachine guns are affordable and moderately effective at medium and short ranges, but ineffective against armored players at longer ranges. Rifles are generally the most expensive weapons; they are long-ranged and can penetrate crates and doors.

The Desert Eagle is unique among pistols in the fact that it can penetrate soft objects (such as wooden crates and doors) like rifles. The P90 has the second largest magazine (the largest magazine belongs to the M249 and its 100-round belt-feed system) of any weapon in the game. After several rounds, with enough money accumulated, players opt for the assault rifles, most commonly the M4A1 and AK-47, and the next most popular being the scoped AUG and SG 552.^{[citation needed]}

With the exception of the Steyr Scout, sniper rifles will significantly weigh down a player's movement, so one member of the team will perform a sniping role. The most popular is the AWM (often referred to as the AWP) which is much feared since it can kill an enemy with any one shot above the mid-thigh, with the Steyr Scout being a less powerful but lighter, faster-cycling and cheaper alternative. The G3SG/1 and SG 550 are less powerful than the AWM but are semi-automatic and have the option for seemingly fully automatic fire (one can see the finger of the character pulling the trigger, because the weapon is actually semi-automatic), thus giving room for error. (The G3SG/1 and SG 550 are classified as sniper rifles in the game, but they are actually assault rifles due to their large size and automatic fire capabilities, though only semi-automatic is available in the game.)

Players also have the option of buying miscellaneous items such as grenades, bomb defusal kits, and tactical shields. HE grenades, which wound upon explosion, flashbang grenades, which temporarily "blind" (shown as a temporary white screen) and deafens players, and smoke grenades, emanating smoke puffs, are all available to the players, at a limited number for each. Counter-Terrorists have the option to purchase a bomb defusal kit, which drastically lowers the time it takes to defuse the Terrorist planted bomb, and they can also purchase a tactical shield. Although preventing the use of a primary weapon, the tactical shield gives the player protection from most fire in the direction the player is facing, as well as giving the player the ability to use their secondary weapon when the shield is at their side. Both teams may also purchase nightvision goggles, assisting the player in dark areas.

This section does not cite any references or sources. Please improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (November 2007)

Counter-Strike is famous for the culture surrounding it, which includes everything from professional gamers and leagues, to excessive cheating and disruptive behavior. Certain professional teams (such as SK Gaming, NiP, Los Angeles Complexity, Team 3D, and fnatic) have come to earn a living out of it, while other clans and community based groups neither lose nor earn money via member donations which are self sustaining in return for administrator rights in servers involved in the community.

The Pure Pwnage character fps_doug is a stereotypical Counter-Strike player. He is shown playing the game, getting angry due to in-game issues, and holding a knife when going out for a jog, saying "Everyone runs faster with a knife!" (a direct reference to the addition in 1.6 and Condition Zero versions). He also created the saying "BOOM! HEADSHOT!"

Ctrl+Alt+Del depicts the character Rob being a Counter-Strike enthusiast.

Counter-Strike remains extremely popular to this day. There are currently professional online leagues supporting Counter-Strike, such as the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL), and CyberEvolution, a pay-to-play league. Various LAN tournaments are held throughout the United States and Europe, with the largest being the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC), the World e-Sports Games (WEG), and the World Cyber Games (WCG). Championship matches in these events are televised with commentary and analysis.

Half-Life and other contemporary games took full advantage of hardware graphics acceleration in the late 1990s, replacing earlier software-rendered games such as Quake. The continued popularity of Counter-Strike has meant that older video cards such as the 3dfx Voodoo3, ATI Rage 128, and NVIDIA RIVA TNT2 remain useful.

Signs of Counter-Strike's wide influence can be found in mods for games such as Quake III Arena, Unreal Tournament, and other standalone shooters such as Global Operations, America's Army, Call of Duty, and many more. There have been a multitude of games claimed by their developers, reviewers and fans to be "Counter-Strike killers," but none have seriously been able to dent its overall popularity. Server statistics in 2002 showed that Counter-Strike servers outnumbered their Battlefield, Unreal Tournament 2003 or Quake III first-person shooter counterparts at least 3 to 1.[2]

However, as criticism of Condition Zero showed, the GoldSrc engine has already been surpassed by several generations of newer engines. Even Counter-Strike: Source has been criticized for not progressing the gameplay enough and failing to take full advantage of the Source engine[3]

Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the game which some players found annoying, and others create different modes of play. Some of the most popular mods give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. "Admin plugins", as they are mostly referred as, have become very popular (see Metamod, AMX Mod and AMX Mod X). There are some mods which affect gameplay heavily, such as Gun Game, where players start with a basic pistol and must score kills to receive better weapons, and Zombie Mod, where one team consists of zombies and must "spread the infection" by killing the other team (using only the knife). There are also the Superhero and Warcraft III mods which mix the first-person gameplay of Counter-Strike with an experience system, allowing a player to become more powerful as they continue to play. Other mods provide new weapon skins.

Counter-Strike has been a prime target for exploitation by cheaters since its release. In-game, cheating is often referred to as "hacking" in reference to program or "hack" executed by the user.

Typical cheats are:

• Wallhacks, which allow the player to see through walls. These work by altering the display driver to display objects that are normally obscured.
• Speedhacks, which give the player increased speed. These work by sending false synchronisation data to servers.
• No recoil, which keeps the players gun shooting straight on the x axis without a kickback by removing gun physics. No spread is used to make a players gun shoot straight along the y axis.
• Aimbots, which helps the player aim at enemies. These work by moving the player's view to anticipate an enemy's position.
• ESP, which shows textual information about the enemy, such as, health, name, and distance, and also information about weapons lying around the map, which could be missed without the hack
• Barrel hack, which shows a line that depicts where the enemy is looking
• Anti-flash and anti-smoke, which remove the flashbang and smoke grenade effect.
• Grenade Dodger, which moves player farther or closer to a grenade, depending on settings.
• Zawila, which tangle all player in the first 2 minutes .

Valve has implemented an anti-cheat system called Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC). Players cheating on a VAC enabled server risk having their account permanently banned from all VAC secured servers.

With the first version of VAC a ban took force almost instantly after being detected, and the cheater had to wait 2 years to have the account unbanned^{[citation needed]}. Since VAC's second version, cheaters are not banned automatically. Rather, they are banned according to a delayed banning system, and bans are permanent. Many cheats are still not detected by VAC, and often the only effective anti-cheat solution is a human administrator watching an online game. VAC, while being effective in some ways, has also provided a boost in the purchasing of private cheats. These cheats are updated frequently, as to prevent detection, and are available to those who pay to use them or to those in the community or clan.

The ever-growing popularity of Counter-Strike has resulted into being referenced or being parodied extensively in popular culture.

• The web-comic Concerned which is based on the adventures of Gordon Frohman in the world of Half-Life 2 has a recurring gag involving Counter-Strike: Source.
• On an episode of the TV show MythBusters exploring a myth involving firearms (whether it is possible to shoot out a floor to escape enemies), one of the co-hosts (Grant) joked that "Now [co-host] Tory can live out his Counter-Strike fantasies."
• Only a few hours after the 2007 Virginia Tech shootings, Florida lawyer Jack Thompson blamed the shootings on Counter-Strike, despite the fact that Seung-Hui Cho had not played the game since he was in high school.
• At the 2003 Toy Fair in New York, 12 inch action figures inspired by Counter-Strike were displayed at the In The Past Toys booth. These figures were based on the 1.6 model skins. [4]
• Devoted players have created real life parodies featuring and portraying characteristics of Counter-Strike gameplay. The short videos, frequently hosted on video sharing sites such as YouTube or Google Video, range in quality and comprehensiveness in terms of similarity to the Counter Strike settings, gameplay, costume and props. [5]
• The new Machinima Series The Leet World bases a reality TV show where the Terrorist (Ahamad, Cortez, Ellis, and Montrose) and Counter Terrorist (Player, Westheimer, Leeroy, and Chet) must live in a house together, in a Beauty and the Geek or Other reality TV show style[6] settings.

• List of Half-Life mods

• Steam
• Valve
• Counter-Strike.net (Original mod page) Now redirects to the Counter-Strike page on Steam

v • d • e Video games developed by Valve Corporation
Half-Life series	Half-Life (Opposing Force, Blue Shift, Decay) · Uplink (demo) · Half-Life: Source Half-Life 2 (Episodes One, Two, Three) · Deathmatch · Lost Coast · Survivor (arcade) Portal
Counter-Strike series	Counter-Strike · Condition Zero · Counter-Strike: Source · Counter-Strike Neo (arcade)
Day of Defeat series	Day of Defeat · Day of Defeat: Source
Team Fortress series	Team Fortress · Team Fortress Classic · Team Fortress 2
Other games	Deathmatch Classic · Gunman Chronicles · Left 4 Dead · Ricochet · The Orange Box
Soundtracks	Valve Soundtracks' Tracklist