Counter Strike: Global Offensive

Gameplay

The gameplay in Global Offensive is similar to that of the previous games in Counter-Strike series in the sense that it is an objective-based multiplayer first-person shooter. Players play as one of two teams; the Terrorists or the Counter Terrorists, with both teams having different objectives: the Terrorists' being to plant the bomb and have it explode or to protect the hostages, depending on the map, and the Counter-Terrorists' being to prevent the bomb from being planted and exploding, or to rescue the aforementioned hostages. At the start of every round players get the opportunity to purchase weapons and equipment with their money that is awarded based on their performance in the previous round. Winning rounds results in more money than losing, and completing objectives such killing enemy players results in more money. Negative actions, such as killing teammates, will result in a penalty.

Matchmaking is supported for all online game modes through the Steam software, and because it is Valve game, it runs Valve Anti-Cheat to prevent hackers. In the competitive modes, players are encouraged to act more strategically in CS:GO than in other games because of the lack of the ability to respawn. When playing competitive, each player has a rank based on their skill level and will be paired up with and against players of around the same skill level. Prime Matchmaking is available to players who have verified their account by inputting their phone number. This was introduced to try to prevent legitimate players from playing with hackers, The PC version of Global Offensive supports private dedicated servers that the player may connect to through the community server menu in-game. These servers may be heavily modified and in turn, can be completely different from the base game. There have been many community made mods for CS:GO, one of the more popular ones being a mod which allows players to complete obstacle courses that require advanced strafing and jumping techniques.

There are six different gamemodes in CS:GO. These consist of Competitive, Casual, Arms Race, Demolition, Deathmatch, and Weapons Course. All of these options have both online or offline options except the Weapons Course which is offline only. Competitive mode is the most serious mode out of all of them, with players being put into a 5v5 match that takes around 45 minutes to complete. Arms Race mode is similar to the "Gun Game" mod for other games in the series. It consists of players racing to upgrade their guns via killing enemies. Demolition mode is again like the "Gun Game" mod, but in Demolition the players are able to plant and defuse the bomb too, and only receive a gun upgrade at the end of the round if they killed an enemy. Casual mode is a toned down version of the competitive mode as it has both team damage and collision disabled. In Deathmatch mode, there is no real objective except to kill the enemy players. Players instaspawn after death, meaning the action is almost continuous. It is most popularly used to practice and learn how all of the guns function. The Weapons Course is an offline practice mode designed to help new players learn how to use the basic items, such as grenades and guns.

CS:GO added new weapons and equipment not seen in previous installments, most notably the firebomb for each side (referred to as a Molotov on the terrorist side and as an Incendiary Grenade on the Counter-Terrorist side). These temporarily cover a small area in fire, dealing damage to anyone passing through. The game also saw the introduction of the Zeus taser and a range of new guns, including shotguns, pistols, and sub-machine guns. Two new gamemodes, Arms Race and Demolition, were added, along with a total of eight new maps for said gamemodes. Both of these gamemodes are variations of mods for the other games in the Counter-Strike series.

Development

Counter Strike: Global Offensive is the sequel to the popular first-person shooter Counter-Strike: Source, developed by Valve Corporation. Development for CS:GO began when Hidden Path Entertainment attempted to port Counter-Strike: Source onto consoles prior to the end of their lifespan. During the development, Valve saw the opportunity to turn the port into a full game and expand on Counter-Strike's gameplay. Global Offensive began development in March 2010, and was revealed to the public on August 12, 2011.

The closed beta started on November 30, 2011, and was initially restricted to around ten thousand people who received a key at events Valve attended to showcase Global Offensive. After issues such as client and server stability were addressed the beta was opened up to progressively more and more people, until the beta became open for anybody to join and play. Before the public beta, Valve invited professional Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source players to play-test the game and give feedback.

At E3 2012, Valve announced that Global Offensive would be released on August 21, 2012, with an open beta starting roughly a month before that.

Post-release

Since the official release of Global Offensive, Valve has continued to release content in the multiple ways, including new maps and weapons, and balancing changes. One of the most major additions to the game post-release was the "Arms Deal" update. Released on August 13, 2013, it added skin: cosmetic weapon finishes. These items were then obtainable via unboxing them by purchasing and using in-game items called keys. They are also able to be obtained in similar ways as the items in Team Fortress 2 and Dota 2 in the sense that they were dropped randomly.

Valve enabled Steam Workshop support for Global Offensive, allowing users to upload user-created content, such as maps, weapon finishes, and custom gameplay scenarios. In previous versions of Counter-Strike, players had to download maps through third party sites, or while connecting to the server. Popular user-created weapon finishes have the chance to be added in the game as official cosmetic items in updates, where they can be received in virtual crates. A portion of the income generated through the sale of keys in order to receive these finishes is given to the creators of the weapon finishes.

Valve supports community map-makers in the form of "Operations", expansion packs in the form of "operation passes" purchasable through in-game transaction, granting access to select community-made maps on Valve official servers. However, from Operation Breakout onwards, players weren't required to buy a pass to access said maps. Each operation only lasts a certain amount of time before a new operation is released, requiring players to buy a new pass. A portion of the income generated through pass sales is given to the creators of the maps.

An update in October 2014 added "music kits", which replace the default in-game music with music from soundtrack artists commissioned by Valve. If a player with a music kit equipped becomes the round's most valuable player, their music will play for others at the end of the round. There is a feature that allows kits to be borrowed, and kits can be sold and exchanged through the Community Market. In late November 2016, glove skins were added, along with a new type of case dubbed the "Glove Case."

Promotions

Since the release of Global Offensive, companies such as SteelSeries have teamed up with Valve to promote real life peripherals, including headsets, mice and mouse pads.

Professional competition

In addition to the third-party organizations that host CS:GO tournament, Valve organizes or co-sponsors a series of events itself, referred to as 'majors'. These events are special in that they have large prize pools, which are crowdfunded by the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community via the in-game purchases, such as keys and special in-game cosmetics, usually in the form of team and player stickers that can be applied onto weapons, and graffiti which can be sprayed anywhere in maps during each round.

On September 23, 2015 it was announced that WME/IMG and Turner Broadcasting were creating a televised Counter-Strike: Global Offensive esports league called ELeague to be broadcast on US cable television network TBS in 2016.

On October 2, 2015, a number of professional esports organization with Counter-Strike teams announced the formation of a trade union that set several demands for future tournament attendance. The announcement was a publicly posted email written by Natus Vincere CEO Alexander Kokhanovskyy that was sent to organizers of major esports events. Among these demands was notice that teams part of the union would not attend a tournament with a prize pool of less than $75,000 for CS:GO and $100,000 for Dota 2. Among the teams that were announced were Natus Vincere, Team Liquid, Counter Logic Gaming, Cloud9, Virtus.pro, Team SoloMid, Fnatic, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Titan, and Team EnVyUs.

Majors

Major tournaments are defined as those tournaments that are sponsored by Valve. The original Majors so far have had a prize pool of $250,000, and has seen increased attendance, including over ten thousand viewers live in stadiums and millions watching on internet-based live streams, as well as increased money to the players through the purchase of stickers. Swedish team Fnatic bested the Ninjas in Pyjamas to win the DreamHack Winter 2013 SteelSeries Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Championship in December 2013, the first Major tournament, with an entire tournament prize pool of $250,000. Virtus.pro won over Ninjas in Pyjamas in the EMS One Katowice 2014 championship, the second Major. Ninjas in Pyjamas won the ESL One Cologne 2014 tournament at Gamescom over Fnatic in 2014. Team LDLC.com won Dreamhack Winter 2014 over Ninjas in Pyjamas. On March 15, 2015, Fnatic won their second major at ESL One Katowice 2015, beating Ninjas in Pyjamas once again. Fnatic won their third major on August 23, 2015 at ESL One Cologne 2015 beating Team EnVyUs 2-0 in a best of three series. DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 in November 2015 was won by EnVyUs over Natus Vincere. The prize pool was increased to $1 million in 2016. MLG Major Championship: Columbus went on from March 29 to April 3, 2016 and was won by Luminosity Gaming over Natus Vincere. The next Major, ESL One Cologne 2016, took place at the Lanxess Arena in Cologne in July 2016 and was won by SK Gaming (former Luminosity Gaming) over Team Liquid. The first Major of 2017, the ELEAGUE Major 2017, was held in Atlanta at the Fox Theatre by Turner affiliate ELEAGUE. Astralis won the tournament in the final against Virtus.pro, which was broadcast live on TBS.

Gambling and third-party betting

The introduction of the Arms Deal update in August 2013 added cosmetic items, termed "skins", into the game. Skins would have a rarity and other high-value factors that influenced their desirability, and these soon became used as virtual currency and the creation of a number of skin trading sites enabled by the Steamworks API. Some of these sites began to offer gambling functionality, allowing users to bet on the outcome of professional matches with skins. In June and July 2016, two formal lawsuits have been filed against these gambling sites and Valve, stating that these encourage underage gambling and undisclosed promotion by some streamers. Valve in turn began to take steps to prevent these sites from using Steamworks for gambling purposes, and several of these sites shut down as a result.

Reception

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive received generally positive reviews from critics. Aggregate review website Metacritic assigned the PC version an overall score of 83 out of 100 based on 38 reviews from professional critics.

Evan Lahti from PC Gamer noted that the majority of new official maps in Global Offensive were only for Arms Race or Demolition game modes; while Classic maps were only given "smart adjustments" to minor details. GameSpy's Mike Sharkey pointed out that the game provides very little in the way of new content; and that the Elo rating system seems ineffective, what "with so many new players of various skill levels logging on for the first time this week". Destructoid gave the game a very positive review, awarding it 9.5/10, saying that it "delivers on the promise of a faithful, polished, and better looking Counter-Strike for anyone who wants it." GameSpot said in their positive review that this game "is a solid update to a classic shooter".

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive won the eSports Game of the Year award at The Game Awards 2015.