Counter-Strike Global Offensive

What is Counter-Strike Global Offensive?

Counter-Strike Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a tactical multiplayer first-person shooter by Valve and the direct predecessor of Counter-Strike 2. Two teams — Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists — face each other in fast, round-based matches.

Depending on the map and the game mode, a bomb has to be planted or defused, or hostages have to be rescued. If neither happens, eliminating the opposing team decides the round. Between rounds players use the money they earned to buy weapons, ammunition and equipment during the buy phase — whoever wins a round usually gets the better start in the next one.

There is no respawn within a round: anyone who dies watches the rest of the round as a spectator. That is exactly what makes the game so tense, because every single decision matters. On top of that comes a map pool grown over many years, with classics such as de_dust2 that a lot of players still know by heart.

Counter-Strike Global Offensive lives from its community servers. Using Metamod:Source and SourceMod you can run plugins on your own server that extend the rules, the admin features or whole game modes. You can also add custom maps and offer them to your players as a download via FastDL. On your own server you decide which maps run, which rules apply and who gets admin rights.

Since the release of Counter-Strike 2, CS:GO is no longer being developed. The game does remain playable, though: in Steam the client can be switched back to the classic CS:GO version using the beta branch csgo_legacy, and the server files are still available. See Join Server for how to switch your client and connect.

Counter-Strike Global Offensive is especially popular among players who want classic, competitive Counter-Strike gameplay combined with their own, freely customisable server environment. The game is available on PC via Steam.