Counter Strike, one of the most played FPS series of all time, celebrates its 22nd anniversary.
When Counter Strike first came out, it was released as a game mode for Half-Life. Afterwards, Valve released Counter Strike as a standalone game. On June 19, 1999, the first public beta version of Counter-Strike was released. With Valve involved, updates that required significant changes to the game engine became possible. In Counter-Strike 1.1, a brand new spectator mode was introduced. In Counter-Strike 1.3, voice communication was added to the game. Anti-cheat technology was included with 1.4 version. Counter-Strike 1.5, culminated all these new features. It was released on June 12, 2002.
In October 2002, it was announced that Counter-Strike 1.6 would be released on Steam. This was a huge news at the time, because Valve was trying to attract some attention to its new “online” store.
The Counter Strike series later continued with various games such as Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source and the newest in the series, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Stats
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO), developed by Valve Corporation and Hidden Path Entertainment, was released to the public on August 12, 2011. CS:GO, which is currently the most played Counter-Strike game, hosts 600-700 thousand players per month.
CS:GO is one the most played multiplayer FPS game, in the world. Here are the Counter-Strike sales stats according to Steam Spy’s data:
- Counter-Strike (Original): 10 – 20 million
- Condition Zero: 5 – 10 million
- Source: 10 – 20 million
- Global Offensive: +25 million
This old but modest game series is the childhood game of many of us. But, it still has that good taste after all these years. Some say the era of CS is over. But they forget one thing, legends never die. Although new games are released, Counter Strike will always have a special place. Happy anniversary Counter Strike!
