Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike
Developer(s)	Valve Corporation Turtle Rock Studios (Xbox)
Publisher(s)	Valve Corporation Sierra Studios (former) Microsoft Game Studios (Xbox)
Distributor(s)	Valve Corporation (1.0-1.5 retail) Steam (online)
Designer(s)	Minh "Gooseman" Le Jess Cliffe
Series	Counter-Strike
Engine	GoldSrc
Platform(s)	Windows, Xbox, OS X, Linux
Release date(s)	June 19, 1999 Windows (GoldSrc Mod) WW June 19, 1999 Windows (Retail) NA November 8, 2000 Windows (Download) WW September 9, 2003 Xbox NA November 18, 2003 EU December 5, 2003 OS X, Linux WW January 24, 2013
Genre(s)	First-person shooter
Mode(s)	Multiplayer
Distribution	Optical disk, download

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation. It was initially developed and released as a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe in 1999, before Le and Cliffe were hired and the game's intellectual property acquired. Counter-Strike was first released by Valve on the Microsoft Windows platform in 2000. The game later spawned a franchise, and is the first installment in the Counter-Strike series. Several remakes and Ports of Counter-Strike have been released on the Xbox console, as well as OS X and Linux.

Set in various locations around the globe, players assume the roles of members of combating teams that include counter-terrorists and terrorists. During each independent match, the two teams of five players are tasked with defeating the other by the means of either achieving the map's objectives, or else killing the enemy combatants. Each player may customize their arsenal of weapons and accessories at the beginning of every match, with the currency earned through each map reset, killing other players and achieving objectives.

The game was the most played Half-Life modification in terms of players, according to GameSpy in 2008.^[1]

As of August 2011, the Counter-Strike franchise has sold over 25 million units.^[2]

Gameplay

The player is standing in the terrorist starting zone of de_dust using a CV-47 (AK-47).

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist team, the counter-terrorist team, or become spectators. Each team attempts to complete their mission objective and/or eliminate the opposing team. Each round starts with the two teams spawning simultaneously.

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). 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 or move (one notable exception is that a player may receive damage during freeze time. This happens when a map is changed to spawn players at a certain height above the ground, thus causing fall damage to the player. This is a method map designers use to alter the starting "HP" of players on a map). They can return to the buy area within a set amount of time to buy more equipment (some custom maps included neutral "buy zones" that could 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, being the first to instruct a hostage to follow, rescuing a hostage or planting (Terrorist) /defusing (Counter Terrorist)the bomb(C4)in the bomb site.

The scoreboard displays team scores in addition to statistics for each player: name, 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 "spectators" for the duration of the round; they cannot change their names before their next spawn, 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 console variable sv_alltalk is set to 1). Spectators 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 form of cheating is known as "ghosting."

Development

Counter-Strike is itself a mod, and it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators. Some mods add bots, while others remove features of the game, and others create different modes of play. Some mods, often called "admin plugins", give server administrators more flexible and efficient control over his or her server. 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 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. The game is also highly customizable on the player's end, allowing the user to install or even create their own custom skins, HUDs, spray graphics, sprites, and sound effects, given the proper tools.

Cheating

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 programs or "hacks" executed by the client.

• Wallhacks allows players to see through walls. These work by displaying objects that are normally obscured or by replacing opaque game textures with translucent ones. As the engine renders only the immediate area around the player, this does not allow a player to see the entire level at once.
• Speedhacks give the player increased foot speed. These work by sending false synchronization data to the server.
• No recoil removes any recoil (and thus improves accuracy) from a player's weapon.
• No spread is used to remove the random deviation normally experienced when the player shoots. This is similar to the recoil hack.
• Aimbots help the player aim at enemies, by auto-targeting other players. These work by using the game client library to calculate an enemy player's 2D coordinates from 3D space and automatically moving the player's mouse to the enemy target. It also consists of headshot aiming where a player shoots a bullet at the enemy which directly hits the enemy's head resulting in a one hit kill.
• ESP shows textual information about the enemy; such as health, name and distance; also information about weapons lying around the map, which could be missed without the hack. Most ESP cheats show info through walls.
• Barrel hack depicts an enemy's gaze as a visible line, this is also visible in the killcam.
• Anti-flash and anti-smoke remove the effects of the flashbang and smoke grenade. Implementation is derived from the wall hack.

• Unlimited HP and ammo are not hacks, but are server side modifications.
• Strafe hack allows players to jump longer, taking advantage of the source engine's strafe function, in which speed (or distance in this case) can be generated by strafing. A strafe hack strafes faster than humanly possible, as well as timing the A and D movement nearly perfectly with mouse movement.
• Bunnyhop script a script that causes the player to jump exactly when they hit the ground, this can be exploited along with strafing to gain an unreasonable amount of speed (bunnyhopping can commonly be mistaken as speed hacking, but bunnyhopping itself is not a hack. using a script to do so however, is). This can be done legitimately as well, but is not nearly as effective. Players can navigate a map in a fraction of what it would take normally via bunnyhopping.

Valve Anti-Cheat

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 hold almost instantly after being detected and the cheater had to wait 2 years to have the account unbanned.^[3] Since VAC's second version, cheaters are not banned automatically. With the second version, Valve instituted a policy of 'delayed bans,' the theory being that if a new hack is developed which circumvents the VAC system, it will spread amongst the 'cheating' community. By delaying the initial ban, Valve hopes to identify (and ban) as many cheaters as possible. Like any software detection system, some cheats are not detected by VAC. To remedy this, some servers implement a voting system, in which case players can call for a vote to kick or ban the accused cheater. VAC's success at identifying cheats and banning those who use them has also provided a boost in the purchasing of private cheats.^[4] These cheats are updated frequently to minimize the risk of detection, and are generally only available to a trusted list of recipients who collectively promise not to reveal the underlying design. Even with private cheats however, some servers have alternative anticheats to coincide with VAC itself. This can help with detecting some cheaters, but most paid for cheats are designed to bypass these alternative server-based anticheats.

Release

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

On March 24, 1999, 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-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up.

Counter-Strike's primary beta release dates occurred on:^[6]

• Beta 1: June 19, 1999
• Beta 2: August 13, 1999
• Beta 3: September 14, 1999
• Beta 4: November 5, 1999
• Beta 5: December 23, 1999
• Beta 6: March 10, 2000
• Beta 7: August 26, 2000

The non-beta public release dates of Counter-Strike are as follows:^[7]

• 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 9, 2003

Note: Version 1.6 effectively coincided with the release of Valve Software's Steam content delivery system on September 12, 2003. All further updates and bug fixes have been dynamically delivered via Steam, without any specific new version numbers. The name or abbreviation "1.6" is often used to differentiate it from the later versions Counter-Strike: Source and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

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.^[8] The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator.

In January 2013, Valve began a Beta of 1.6 for targeting Linux and OS X users. The updates are available for Windows users via the Beta opt-in tab as part of the properties of the game within Steam.^[9] These changes were later rolled into an update of the standard (non-Beta) game in April 2013.^[10]

Reception

Counter-Strike received generally favorable reviews.^[14] The New York Times reported that E-Sports Entertainment ESEA League started the first professional fantasy e-sports league in 2004 ^[15] around the game of Counter-Strike.^[16] Some credit the move into professional competitive team play with prizes as a major factor in Counter-Strike's longevity and success.^[17]

Controversy

Counter-Strike faced controversy in April 2007 when Jack Thompson, a now-disbarred attorney from Florida, predicted that the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre had been trained to kill in the game, well before Seung-Hui Cho (the shooter) was identified. News sources originally stated that Seung-Hui Cho only played the game in high school, however no video games whatsoever were found in the gunman's dorm room, and there is no evidence that he ever played Counter-Strike.^[18][19] Thompson also blamed Counter-Strike for the February 14, 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting perpetrated by Steven Kazmierczak on the day after the shooting. It is reported that Kazmierczak did play Counter-Strike in college.

On January 17, 2008, a Brazilian federal court order prohibiting all sales of Counter-Strike and EverQuest and imposing the immediate withdrawal of these from all stores began to be enforced. The federal Brazilian judge Carlos Alberto Simões de Tomaz, of the Minas Gerais judiciary section, ordered the ban in October 2007 because, according to him, the games "bring imminent stimulus to the subversion of the social order, attempting against the democratic and rightful state and against the public safety."^{[20][21][22][23]} The move has been described by media as a publicity stunt on the regulation of video game violence and sexually explicit content, and also as a hasty decision that ignored much more violent games. As all versions of Counter-Strike were very popular in Brazil at the time, the decision was met with considerable uproar by the Brazilian gaming community. Some media have reported that the game tested by the judge contained mods likening the scenario to Rio de Janeiro's favelas and adding Brazilian Military Police uniforms to player models, which might have worsened the case for Counter-Strike. The game's developer Valve did not comment on the episode. 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.^[24]

Legacy

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 game, was the first in the series to use Valve's Source engine and was also released in 2004, only eight months after the release of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero. The next game in the Counter-Strike series to be developed primarily by Valve Corporation was Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, released for Windows, OS X, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 in 2012.

The game also spawned multiple spin-offs in the form of arcade games developed by Nexon Corporation and targeted primarily at Asian gaming markets. Three Counter-Strike games have been developed and released by Nexon Corporation thus far, Counter-Strike Neo, Counter-Strike Online, and Counter-Strike Online 2.

References

External links

• Valve Games
• Steam Store

v t e Valve games Half-Life series Half-Life Opposing Force Blue Shift Decay Source Half-Life 2 Episode One Two Portal series Portal Portal 2 Counter-Strike series Counter-Strike Condition Zero Source Neo Online Global Offensive Online 2 Day of Defeat series Day of Defeat Source Team Fortress series Team Fortress Classic Team Fortress 2 Left 4 Dead series Left 4 Dead Left 4 Dead 2 Deathmatch series Deathmatch Classic Half-Life Deathmatch: Source Half-Life 2: Deathmatch Other games Ricochet The Orange Box Alien Swarm Dota 2 Book • Category