Counter-Strike received generally favorable reviews.

On August 18, 2004, the beta was released to owners of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and those who had received a Half-Life 2 voucher bundled with some ATI Radeon video cards.

Thompson also blamed Counter-Strike for the February 14, 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting perpetrated by Steven Kazmierczak on the day after the shooting.

As of June 18, 2009, a regional federal court order lifting the prohibition on the sale of Counter-Strike was published.

* Counter-Strike: Condition Zero – ( PC ) Ritual Entertainment was working on the title in 2002 after Gearbox Software and before Turtle Rock Studios took over in mid-2003

In round-based games such as Counter-Strike or Call of Duty 2 there has been much debate on what is defending and what is camping.

This event marks the beginning of QuakeWorld's submergence underground, as most players went on to newer games such as Counter-Strike, and Quake III Arena, and there has never been such an international LAN competition in QuakeWorld since ( although QHLan has come close ).

Among popular mods, none is more well known than the Half-Life multiplayer mod Counter-Strike, which was released shortly after the original game, and upwards of 1 million games per day are hosted on dedicated servers.

CrossOver Games, announced on 10 March 2008, was a new product that let the users play a broad range of games, " particularly games with a lot of replayability such as MMOs like World of Warcraft and the range of games from Valve e. g., Team Fortress 2, Counter-Strike: Source, and so on ".

* November — Counter-Strike: Source and Half-Life 2 are officially released on PC around the world, bringing in a new era for the First Person Shooter genre of video game, with advanced graphics & physics.

Games commonly seen referenced on GameSurge include many first person shooters ( such as Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat, Call of Duty, and Battlefield 2 ) and MMORPGs ( such as World of Warcraft and Guild Wars ).

Among the more popular games on GameSurge are Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Source, Team Fortress Classic, Team Fortress 2, Day of Defeat, Urban Terror and Call of Duty.

These new articles covered the previously undocumented Counter-Strike: Source bot ( added by the bot's author, Mike Booth ), Valve's NPC AI, advice for mod teams on setting up source control, and more.

Eurogamer echoed criticism on the game's length ; reviewer Tom Bradwell commented that " although I'm hard pressed to criticize what you get, the complete absence of everything we've learnt from the likes of Counter-Strike and everything since is frankly bizarre ".

Valve's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will also support Steamworks and cross-platform features on the PlayStation 3, including using keyboard and mouse controls as an alternative to the gamepad.

Tactical Ops: Assault on Terror is an online multiplayer computer game with similar gameplay to Counter-Strike.

Counter-Strike: Source was initially released as a beta to members of the Valve Cyber Café Program on August 11, 2004.

On March 5, 2010, Valve Corporation announced the release of its entire first-party library, including Counter-Strike, on the Mac OS X platform, for release in April 2010.

While he was working on the Action Quake 2 mod, he came up with the idea for Counter-Strike and became friends with AQ2's webmaster Jess Cliffe.

Le began work on Counter-Strike as a mod for Half-Life while he was in the middle of his fourth year at Simon Fraser University ( he later graduated with a degree in computer science ).

In 2000, Valve bought the rights to Counter-Strike and hired Le and Cliffe to work with them in Bellevue, Washington, USA where Le continued to work on Counter-Strike and related games.

The name or abbreviation " 1. 6 " is often used to differentiate it from the newer version Counter-Strike: Source.

The non-Steam version of Counter-Strike ( version 1. 5 ) can still be downloaded from sites such as FilePlanet.

The Steam client was first made available for download in 2002 during the beta period for Counter-Strike 1. 6.

Installation and use of Steam was mandatory for Counter-Strike 1. 6 beta testers, but Steam remained an optional component.

After the shutdown of WON, some players continued to run a patched version of the retail versions of Half-Life or Counter-Strike, which connects to a WON replacement called No-WON ( or WON2 ), and allows users to use the original server browser to connect to Half-Life servers, and their various mods ( including Counter-Strike 1. 5, and a Steamless version of 1. 6 ), much as they could before WON's shutdown.

They developed an updated bot AI that was beta tested in Counter-Strike 1. 6 before release.

Recent versions have included measures to curb overuse of the Barrett, including " bink " ( a Counter-Strike term which lowers accuracy when hit by gunfire ), an increased power of other weapons, and, recently in 1. 3. 1, a startup time similar to the one present on the M72 LAW.

* Counter-Strike ( ati_subdiv " 2. 0 ", ati_npatch " 1. 0 ")

Planet Half-Life has been running public game servers since 2006, hosting 24 / 7 map rotations for Counter-Strike 1. 6, Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Half-Life: Deathmatch, Half-Life 2: Deathmatch and Team Fortress 2.

As of Counter-Strike version 1. 6, bunny-hopping has been made harder to perform.

VAC was first released with Counter-Strike 1. 4 in 2002, following Valve's decision to forego PunkBuster in preference of a proprietary system.

Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004, forcing players to switch to Steam.

The New York Times reported that E-Sports Entertainment ESEA League started the first professional fantasy e-sports league in 2004 around the game of Counter-Strike.

* Counter-Strike: Source, a 2004 complete remake of Counter-Strike using Source ( game engine ).

It debuted in June 2004 with Counter-Strike: Source and shortly thereafter Half-Life 2, and has been in active development ever since.

GameSpy Arcade allows users to play games online such as Halo, Command & Conquer: Renegade, Counter-Strike, Unreal Tournament 2004, as well as various other First-Person-Shooters and Strategy games.

Christensen led SK Gaming to the World Cyber Games Counter-Strike championship in 2003 and to 4th place in 2004.

Christensen was nominated for Best Counter-Strike Player of the Year in 2004, losing out to SK Gaming teammate, Tommy " potti '" Ingemarsson.

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.

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.

Many commercialized parties offer various tournaments, with competitions in such games as StarCraft, StarCraft II, Warcraft III, World of Warcraft, Counter-Strike Source, Unreal Tournament, Team Fortress 2, America's Army, Garry's Mod, and games from the Quake, Left 4 Dead, Call of Duty, Battlefield, Doom and Halo series.

Originally made to be a team-play game ( much like Counter-Strike, but with added action movie realism ), The Specialists soon evolved into a death-match game with action movie realism.

Unlike other Counter-Strike games, Condition Zero also contains a single-player mission pack with the player playing as counter-terrorist alongside bots.

Gearbox created an overhaul of Counter-Strike with high quality models and better graphics, similar to Blue Shift compared to Half-Life.

It was expected to have a release in early 2003 with a secondary multiplayer mode, and developed alongside the Xbox version of Counter-Strike.

Half-Life mods such as Counter-Strike use a game DLL to interact with the Half-Life engine.

Minh Le ( Vietnamese: Lê Minh, born June 27, 1977 ), also known by his online nickname Gooseman, is a Vietnamese-Canadian computer game developer who co-created the popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike with Jess Cliffe in 1999.

Le's new game was later revealed to be Tactical Intervention, a game similar in style to Counter-Strike created with a modified version of Valve's Source engine.

Porting Half-Life to console platforms ( each with new game content ) followed, building the company's experience in console game-making, in addition to enhancing and building upon the successful Counter-Strike branch of the Half-Life franchise.

It is a side-scroller inspired by Liero and Scorched Earth, combined with elements from Counter-Strike and Worms.