Counter-Strike is a tactical first-person shooter video game developed by Valve Corporation which originated from a Half-Life modification by Minh " Gooseman " Le and Jess " Cliffe " Cliffe.

The game has been expanded into a series since its original release, which currently includes Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, Counter-Strike: Source, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter in which players join either the terrorist team, the counter-terrorist team, or become spectators.

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.

Counter-Strike received a major technology update and refresh on November 1, 2004 with the release of Counter-Strike: Source, which was heavily updated using Valve's Source game engine to take advantage of more modern graphics and audio hardware.

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

On August 12, 2011, it was confirmed that a new Counter Strike game was in development at Valve Software and Hidden Path Entertainment, which also codevelops Counter-Strike: Source, going under the title Global Offensive.

Valve heavily modified the QuakeWorld engine to produce the GoldSrc engine, which powers Half-Life, Team Fortress Classic ( a follow-up to the QuakeWorld mod Team Fortress ), and Counter-Strike, among others.

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.

Beta 3. 0 was released in July 2002 and added the Allied Sergeant, who carried a M3 Grease Gun, as well as the para gameplay mode which was similar to Counter-Strike in that players did not respawn until the end of the round.

* September 12 — Valve releases the first stable version of Steam, which would replace the WON system that has been used for Counter-Strike and other Valve games a year later.

Several other games use the Source engine, including Day of Defeat: Source and Counter-Strike: Source, both of which were also developed by Valve.

This pushing back of HL2s release date came in the wake of the cracking of Valve's internal network through a null session connection to Tangis which was hosted in Valve's network and a subsequent upload of an ASP shell, resulting in the leak of the game's source code and many other files including maps, models and a playable early version of Half-Life Source and Counter-Strike Source in early September 2003.

Newell had indicated that they would like to bring the service to the console through the game Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which would have allowed them to provide the same feature set that they did for the PlayStation 3, but later affirmed that cross-platform play would not be present in the final version of the game.

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.

The weapons are colored a bit differently from their Counter-Strike counterparts, such as the Arctic Warfare Magnum which is now brown instead of green, the Steyr AUG and the Colt M4 carbine are now two-tone police black instead of the usual colors.

They have developed a total of six games in the Half-Life series: Half-Life: Opposing Force and Half-Life: Blue Shift ( expansion packs ); ports of Half-Life for Dreamcast ( which included Half-Life: Blue Shift ) and Half-Life for PlayStation 2 ( which included Half-Life: Decay ); they also did a large amount of work on both the retail release of Counter-Strike and the main portion of Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.

Counter-Strike is a notable exception, in that the player models are seen externally to fire akimbo Berettas from the hip, but appear to be firing from shoulder level from the first-person perspective.

Though Counter-Strike is itself a mod, it has developed its own community of script writers and mod creators.

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

However, the original Counter-Strike is still available and played by many people via Steam, as the two variants are quite different, and players inevitably prefer one variant over the other.

Counter-Strike Online is available in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia, and is now fully online.

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.

It is reported that Kazmierczak did play Counter-Strike in college.

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.

Counter-Strike is probably the best example of a modification that turns into a retail game.

New World Order is an online team-based tactical first-person shooter video game, similar to Counter-Strike.

In computer gaming the term is usually used to refer to a person highly skilled in multiplayer games like StarCraft, Warcraft III ( RTS / RPG-DotA ), Diablo II ( RPG ), Counter-Strike ( FPS ) and others.

It is also used in computer games that don't allow Russian typing in chat, particularly Counter-Strike.

It is a well-known phenomenon within the games Counter-Strike and its sequel, and F. E. A. R.

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 ".

* Counter-Strike, is a tactical first-person shooter video game.

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

Tactical Ops is generally considered a combination of gameplay features of Counter-Strike and Unreal Tournament.

Counter-Strike: Source ( officially abbreviated CSS ) is an FPS video game developed by Valve Corporation.

It is a complete remake of Counter-Strike using the Source game engine.

By the fourth beta version, Valve Software, the developer who created Half-Life, began assisting in the development of Counter-Strike.

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.

On March 24, 1999, Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section.

* Minh Le, creator of the popular Half-Life mod Counter-Strike

Half-Life: Counter-Strike, a mod of Half-Life ( 1998 ), was the most popular multiplayer game of its era.

* Counter-Strike, a modification of the computer game Half-Life.

In the case of Half-Life, a mod called Counter-Strike drove sales of the original software for years.

* 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.

Notable examples of the genre include Doom, Quake, Half-Life, Counter-Strike, GoldenEye 007, Battlefield, Medal of Honor, Unreal, Call of Duty, Killzone, Timesplitters and Halo.

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

The announcement disappointed some of the long-time Half-Life and Counter-Strike players who held it in high esteem for being, at the time, more efficient in terms of speed and system resources than Steam.

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.

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

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