20 years of GPORTAL: Counter-Strike, from mod to top game

The start as a mod of Half Life

Before Counter-Strike became an independent game, it was launched in 1999 as a modification for the first-person shooter Half Life. Even as a mod, Counter-Strike became very popular in a very short time and quickly built its own fanbase, this worked mainly through LAN parties and the beginnings of the Internet in the early 2000s. Originally created as a mod of Half Life, Counter-Strike was developed by a small hobbyist development team around the minds of Minh Le and Jess Cliffe, and came out as its own game in 2000 after Valve pushed and supported its development.

As a mod for Half Life, Counter-Strike initially included just a handful of weapons, four maps and the hostage rescue mode. Gradually, more and more patches were added, which then added more weapons, maps and also the bomb disposal mode. Of course, GPORTAL also had Half Life available from the beginning back then, which was always extremely popular with the mods for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress, so it's no wonder that Counter-Strike morphed from a mod to a game in its own right.

Release of Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike 1.6

So now Counter-Strike was released under the official name Counter-Strike 1.0 in early 2000, but could still be played as a mod for Half Life. Thanks to further updates and patches, Counter-Strike was provided with more and more new features, such as the voice chat function, so that the players in the group could also proceed tactically better, and an anti-cheat system, which was supposed to stop the quickly emerging cheaters in Counter-Strike.

In 2003, after a few months of development, a new version called Counter-Strike 1.6 was released, and from then on you had to have an account on Steam, because the game could not be started any other way. At the end of the same year, an Xbox version was even released, which made it possible to play multiplayer with the Xbox Live system.

Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Source

In the following year 2004, the Counter-Strike version called Condition Zero was released, which was mainly designed for single-player mode. The graphics of the game were revised and improved, and several development studios were involved in its creation, which were swapped more often. In CS: Condition Zero you had the possibility to play two different single player modes. In the normal main game, you have to complete pre-set tasks to reach a higher rank and earn in-game money, which in turn could be used to buy additional NPCs that came up with various weapons and abilities. The second mode consists of originally deleted modules that Valve originally did not want to include in the game, but then added to the game anyway. You play an elite soldier in the mode, who also has to fulfill predefined tasks like rescuing hostages. The number of players and popularity of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was limited, since it was mainly a graphics update and many didn't want to play the new modes, but rather the previous and well-known Counter-Strike campaigns.

A short time later, after Counter-Strike: Condition Zero was released, Half Life 2 was released and with it Counter-Strike: Source, which was based on Valve's own Source engine. The newly developed engine provided a huge step forward in terms of graphics and game physics, as the selection of settings was really gigantic for the time. The physics engine called Havok in conjunction with Valve's Source engine offered a completely new gaming experience and due to these developments, it also received a lot of criticism from the direction of eSports, since the settings were an advantage for many, for example, to be able to recognize enemies faster and better.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

In 2012, the now well-known Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, or CS:GO for short, was released, which replaced the previously classic Counter-Strike at the end of the same year. Improved graphics, new weapons and maps were part of the release of CS:GO, and just like CS: Source, CS:GO also relies on Valve's Source engine. Shortly after the game's release, the well-known weapon skins also hit the market, which can be bought in the Steam store with real money or obtained through completed matches - some of these skins are worth several thousand euros. CS:GO was originally supposed to be released as a cross-platform game, however, some obstacles along the way made it not quite easy and currently CS:GO is only playable on PC and macOS.

Counter-Strike 2 to be released in 2023

For a long time it was quiet about a possible successor of the popular first-person shooter, but in March of this year Valve introduced Counter Strike 2, which is a free upgrade to the Source 2 engine and therefore a significant improvement of the graphics and physics of Counter-Strike. Here you can find the matching news from GPORTAL about Counter-Strike 2 and what we know about it so far, because Counter-Strike 2 is supposed to be released this summer. All further information about Counter-Strike 2 you can get here.

Counter-Strike in criticism and in eSports

Since the release of the first-person shooter Counter-Strike it is mentioned again and again in connection with so-called "killer games", which are often made responsible for several attacks or rampages. Counter-Strike is used by the media as a game that glorifies violence, and unfortunately it is often the victim of highly overblown and exaggerated scenes of the game being shown. In 2002, an application for the game to be indexed was filed, but it was rejected. A version of the first-person shooter called Counter-Strike Neo was created for the Japanese market, which was intended to break away from the terrorism theme and used anime-style game characters. In addition, there was a karma system that rewarded players with points who directly attacked enemies and punished those who tended to hide.

Due to the rapid spread of Counter-Strike, it was also incorporated into eSports quite quickly and was not only used as a title by hobby and casual leagues, international professional leagues also started using Counter-Strike and the prize money of the winners was and still is often in the six-figure range. In 2001, the big breakthrough came when Counter-Strike officially replaced Quake III Arena as the tournament game in the CPL World Championship Event.

Since 2014, the so-called "The Cathedral of Counter-Strike" has been held in the Lanxess Arena in Cologne, which is one of the gaming highlights every summer. Prize money of $1 million is at stake, and fans can watch their idols live during the tactical matches and, with a bit of luck, even get autographs and get up close and personal.

What is Counter-Strike all about?

Counter-Strike is not a first-person shooter in which you shoot meaninglessly at other players, because there are several modes that include different objectives and missions. You start with a group in a team and play against each other's team, you will either be in the terrorist team, Terrorists, or the anti-terrorist unit, Counter Terrorists. As a team, you then have to be tactically smart against the other group, with a set time limit and playing multiple rounds. The start begins each time at two specified spawn points and just before the beginning of each round, each individual player must equip themselves with weapons and appropriate equipment.

In each game round, enemies have to be killed and missions have to be completed, which gives you in-game money and points, but if you hit your own teammates or even hostages, money and points are deducted. A game round is always over when either all players of a group have been killed or the missions have been completed successfully. When a round is survived, all weapons, ammunition and other items are kept for the next round. At the beginning of each round, each player has a life meter that has 100 health points. Damage is not only received from shots or other attacks of the opponents, but also falling damage or explosions will drain you of health points.

Communication during the game consists of a chat, voice chat or pre-recorded samples that you can play and give your team important information, although many players also use third-party providers for this, such as Discord or TeamSpeak. You can play on several maps, each of which represents a realistic environment. Now it's a matter of whether hostages have to be rescued or bombs defused.

Hostage rescue was the first mission in Counter-Strike and consists of the anti-terrorist unit freeing several hostages from the terrorists' danger zone and then escorting them safely to a rescue zone. The bomb defusing involves one player of the terrorist team carrying a C4 explosive charge and placing it in one of two designated places and arming it. The anti-terrorist unit must then defuse the bomb in a short time or, at best, prevent the bomb from being planted in advance. To disarm the bomb, you can buy a disarming set before the start of the game round, which greatly reduces the time of disarming.

Rent your Counter-Strike server at GPORTAL

The history and development around Counter-Strike is really exciting and will remain so, because we all feverishly await the release of Counter-Strike 2 and hope that in a few weeks or days we will finally be able to play it officially. Do you want to dive into the world of the popular first-person shooter and play tactical rounds with your friends? Then rent a high-performance Counter-Strike server from GPORTAL now!