Heads up to those who played CS:GO years ago and like money. I was a pretty active player from 2012 to 2014.
Back then I got dozens of crates that I didn't open, now worth as high as 31$CAD each. I looked it up last week and it's worth over a thousand dollars in Steam. I cashed in on almost half of it and now I have some cash to buy games for my family and friends.
number6 · 55m ago
That's already over ten years ago... Wow CS:GO is still the new CS for me, that never catched on and everybody played 1.6
simlevesque · 27m ago
It's a new game now, CS2. CS:GO isn't accessible anymore. But the loot carried on to the new game.
TheAceOfHearts · 1h ago
Something that wasn't mentioned in the article is that Counter-Strike spawned the creation of the most iconic FPS map ever: de_dust2. If an FPS supports custom maps, it's inevitable that de_dust2 will get ported to it.
There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans.
I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by something like Fortnite or some other shooter map.
I believe de_dust2 is likely still the most played FPS map. Not sure which other map could have dethroned it. It can’t be Fortnite since Fortnite changes the map every few months and nowadays makes a new one every year or so.
I guess Blood Gulch from the time when Halo was super popular was a very popular map as well.
Then you also have 2fort from the Team Fortress games.
But yes I would say de_dust2 is very likely still the most played FPS map and it will likely stay that way.
GlobalElite · 1h ago
I grew up with CS1.6 and spent what must be thousands of hours on it before I turned 18. But I can't stand what Valve did to modern versions of CS. The reason? Gambling. So much fucking gambling everywhere. Other games have lootboxes, I hate them, but they are usually "contained" in the sense that you do not see them in every context surrounding the game. But because CS skins can be traded between players, there is now an entire third party ecosystem for skin trading and worse, skin gambling. Lootboxes inside lootboxes. And now it feels like every CS YouTuber, streamer and even teams at lower tiers is sponsored by a skin casino. I remember dropping into a stream of a professional player only to watch him throw $500 (God knows where the money comes from) away playing what is basically a CS skin roulette. WTF.
And there is also the typical sports gambling shit. HLTV the main news source of the pro CS scene is full of gambling ads. Higher tier tournaments often give a segment to gambling people talking about odds between matches. And as you would expect in a scene with rampant gambling there is match fixing. The serious media and the authorities will not look into it because esports is not serious stuff, but people know it’s there. Whenever you see a tier 2 team throw a most winnable match in the weirdest fashion you can see a stream of Twitch chat messages calling it rigged. People know but nothing will be done against it. Check out Richard Lewis if you want more information on that.
I would love to see a modern shooter with nice graphics and self hostable servers in the same niche as the old CS. But all we got is Valorant and its kernel spyware (oops I mean anticheat). Guess I should just keep player CS1.6 until I die shrug
mervz · 1h ago
Hate it all you want, but it's the sole reason Counter-Strike still exists today. Without skins, Valve would have shut the door on the game (and quite possibly the company entirely).
Skins is literally a money printing machine.
Loudergood · 1h ago
You don't think they make more money with Steam?
pityJuke · 56m ago
> sole reason Counter-Strike still exists today
Every other live service manages with non-gambling skins. They have their own problems (usually around FOMO), but nowhere near the literal gambling that is CS.
> Valve would have shut the door on the game
In terms of not having any developers on it, sure, not impossible.
> (and quite possibly the company entirely)
Ahahahaha come on man, even without CS, Valve is one of the most profitable companies of all time.
pityJuke · 1h ago
> I would love to see a modern shooter with nice graphics and self hostable servers in the same niche as the old CS.
I mean, that is still CS: you want one without gambling (which is reasonable!)
stillthat · 1h ago
#priming
Uhm, wow. Most winnable matches often enough end when the drugs wear off for hundreds of reasons.
You are looking at it from the wrong angle. From what I have seen, it's rarely a whole team that fucks up while winning. Also: often enough: they don't seem to be aware of the pattern that just occurred in their brains (are not, as far as I learned from Paul E.). I believe these kids are put on drugs without consent.
I have no proof, of course.
I noticed it first in soccer back in '16, I think. Which surprised me because it was not boxing or wrestling or the UFC, where such things are the standard.
alexjplant · 2h ago
I started with CS: Source and quickly got into 1.6 because of the more expansive funmaps and modding scene. It was like the Wild West (or literally as was the case with de_westwood) - Nipper's penchant for glitchy drivable vehicles, ridiculously huge maps with teleports galore and weird music, fy_iceworld, gun game... it was so wonderfully weird. The fact that the core of the game stayed the same for so many years without DLC meant that people got good at it on their own merit without worrying about dropping money on upgrades or grinding long hours to get drops or whatever.
Maybe I'm old but I feel as though there's still a place for shooters of this nature. Every time I hear about new seasons dropping for some ultra-popular game I lose interest; I've no desire to keep up with the evolution of a game coordinated by a billion-dollar company to extract money from my wallet after I already paid for it.
But yes, I was never really a 1.6 player but I felt the same way about Garry's Mod maps. Joining a random server and seeing the maps and assets download and never really knowing what you were going to spawn into... it was wonderfully weird in a way that reminds me of the individuality of the Old Internet™. It might be nostalgia talking but there's some crispness and snappiness to the Source engine that games these days don't quite have.
bob1029 · 1h ago
I think there is still a huge market for this stuff.
An entire shooter based solely upon the principles of fy_iceworld & gun game would wipe the floor with most other AAA titles on offer right now.
Insanity · 2h ago
Modding and mapping were what made CS great in my opinion. Since CS:GO, Valve has been quietly killing that scene by making it harder and harder for people to find these game modes.
But to be honest, I think it's an artifact of our (or at least my) generation. I've played CS for thousands of hours, same with l4d and cod2/4, and I don't _need_ a battle pass, seasons, constant updates etc. Though when chatting with my ~14 year younger cousin about this some months ago, he said it'd be "boring to play a game that doesn't get updates". So.. different times :)
Loudergood · 2h ago
The disappearance of the ability to run your own Dedicated Server is a real tragedy.
deadbabe · 2h ago
What games even let you run your own dedicated servers?
asabla · 1h ago
Mostly AA and indie game titles. The simulator scene is still going strong with dedicated servers (like squad, arma, farming simulator, the hunter etc etc).
Larger titles swapped over to more control in order to extract more money from the players, but also control the experience.
There is however some AAA titles every now and then which support hosting your own servers. But they're quite few these days
password4321 · 1h ago
Many PC-only games do, more likely to do so the older they are. The newest I'm familiar with is Valheim.
I'm actually looking for Android (Kindle) game recommendations that are cross platform and allow self-hosted servers.
nkrisc · 2h ago
These days? Not many. I’m sure there are some but probably one of the most popular that I’m aware of is Minecraft. There are quite a few custom server implementations alongside the official Java one.
bombcar · 1h ago
Factorio and Minecraft.
drabbiticus · 1h ago
Given the thread, I'm assuming their mostly referring to CS 1.6, but games like Minecraft are another example.
bigstrat2003 · 1h ago
I don't think it's just "different times" as you put it. Those kids have had their brains ruined by companies' profit-maximization schemes. It makes me really angry (at these companies) and sad (for the kids) that they have been the victims of such a thing. Every generation before them could just enjoy things without needing endless novelty and updates, but they have apparently been robbed of that.
ivape · 1h ago
Quietly? They monopolized the modding community. There is a universe where gamers could sell their weapon skins, but now only Valve sells their own skins. They killed modders.
Insanity · 1h ago
Actually that's a really good point on the skins aspect. But I think the community might be in a better shape if the dedicated servers were easier to find.
I miss surf_greatriver and its variants :(
zedascouves · 2h ago
I Started with actionquake (aq2). check it out.
Minh “Gooseman” Le, one of CS’s creators, was a fan of AQ2. Counter-Strike (first released in June 1999 as a Half-Life mod) built on AQ2’s ideas but refined them with better hitboxes, buy menus, maps, and more tactical pacing.
AQ2 is often described as “the bridge between Quake and Counter-Strike”.
Melatonic · 1h ago
So many good mods back then - "the specialists" I remember being particularly fun as well
jameslk · 19m ago
TS was severely underrated. I think it was inspired by Action HL, which of course I can only imagine was inspired by Action Quake. There were so many good ones though, like Natural Selection, Sven Coop, Firearms. It was incredible the quality of mods that were available, all for free
xatxat · 1h ago
The AQ2 community perceived CS as way too slow though. No wonder when you are used to strafe jumping through team jungle and urban :-)
dtjohnnymonkey · 1h ago
AQ2 was such a fun mod. It's been a while since I played, but if I recall you could some real John-Woo style moves as if you are in an action movie.
The article says that Le created it though:
Two years later he created Action Quake 2, a fast-paced game inspired by “Die Hard”
princevegeta89 · 2h ago
Recently I stumbled upon an online port of CS 1.6, called play-cs.com.
It's just great - exactly the same game and works very smooth in a browser.
I played it briefly for a few months and was happy I was able to get into the top rankings overall.
Just sharing it here if anyone wants to try it out.
roflchoppa · 1h ago
Dude i love play-cs, I feel like there is a slight lag in the browser compared to the native app that I was playing on Windows back in the day... maybe i gotta switch over to Chrome from FF.
ViktorRay · 2h ago
I’m glad Valve never sold out with Counter Strike. The game still has that raw brutal aesthetic that works so well with the gameplay. It’s a big part of the reason the game feels the way it does.
Other games have lots of wacky skins and stuff but the Counter Strike games never had that and hopefully never will. Some of the unofficial servers are pretty wacky which is fine as they are unofficial.
dominick-cc · 2h ago
Newer versions of counterstrike have skins/loot boxes
ViktorRay · 2h ago
Yes but they aren’t wacky or silly
GlobalElite · 1h ago
Fun story: when they added skin lootboxes to CSGO they intended to make the dull, serious looking skins rare ones and the flashy wacky ones common. It quickly turned out that the players like flashy skins more and now the wackiness and silliness of a skin is positively correlated with its rarity and price.
sitzkrieg · 2h ago
umm... have you seen them lately?
coldfoundry · 2h ago
Honestly, I’ll take what CS2 is giving any day of the week over the Bevis and Butthead/Nikki Minaj/Terminator anime laser skins that call of duty has been putting out lately. At least they stick to the standardized models.
mrguyorama · 2h ago
Instead they are a transparent system that enables literal children to get addicted to gambling and valve takes a cut of every payout and they are well aware of this.
CS is not a billion dollar game. CS is a fairly unprofitable game with a giant tumor of a marketplace attached, a significant point of which is being a faux currency that escapes most currency controls
nsilvestri · 1h ago
"Fairly unprofitable [if you ignore all the parts that generate revenue.]"
I will admit that gambling $0.16 in skins on pro matches when I was 15 was a lot of fun. Maybe I'm lucky to have gotten away (relatively) unscathed, but I do have a little nostalgia for those days.
snapcaster · 1h ago
most people can try cocaine without getting addicted but that doesn't make it safe or something we should shove in the faces of children
y-curious · 1h ago
It's not pay-to-win and the skins are de facto NFTs (with resale value). It's a loot crate system done right IMO
snapcaster · 1h ago
>loot crate system done right
Would advise looking into why those skins are so valueable. spoiler: money laundering and hooking kids on gambling
GlobalElite · 1h ago
It is worse than the typical lootbox scheme because the entire CS ecosystem is now saturated with marketing of third party skin trading sites and casinos. And at the end of the day it is still gambling. Just because you can resell your skins (and let Valve take a cut in the process) does not make it ethical.
thinkingQueen · 35m ago
Beta 5.2 was when I had the best time with Counter-Strike. de_dust with a Colt was fun. Never forget the AWP snipers lurking near the big front door in cs_assault. There were some weird maps like cs_siege — I think it had some sort of a moving vehicle there somewhere in a tunnel.
jameslk · 36m ago
> After several other versions, Valve released Counter-Strike 2 in 2023 without Le’s direct handiwork.
This is closest the article gets to mentioning css and csgo. Both of those games were like 90% of my teens
Lots of history glossed over. Like the maps and plugins/addons. The mappers were legends in their own right
Insanity · 2h ago
Ahh, I started playing CS back in 2004. I go back to it every year for a few weeks / months, but the latest iteration (CS2) leaves some things to be desired from the 'community server' perspective.
No good surf ("TDM") style games anymore, seems like that game mode has mainly died in favour of the timed surf game-mode.
So now I stick to the 'vanilla' game much more, but without a group of friends that plays regularly, it's a bit of a frustrating experience at times.
angrydev · 1h ago
Yeah I dabbled with the “competitive” play in 1.6 back in the day when it was finding matches on irc but most of my fun came from the communities I played with consistently. Maybe you can find these in some form but it’s not what most people are talking about these days if they say they “play counter strike”. I don’t really like the seriousness of ranked play so I never got back into it.
newsclues · 2h ago
Yeah, I started playing it on vacation in a German lan cafe.
Came back to Canada and asked EB games for a copy but they didn’t know what counter strike was, and I didn’t understand that it was a mod for half life
Simulacra · 2h ago
I can't quit, it's the only game I love but my hands are getting old.
ManlyBread · 1h ago
I was looking forward towards the Classic Offensive mod but then Valve DMCA'd it just a few days before the release. Awful move considering that not only they've okayed it before but also completely ignored the developers when they were trying to contact them. 8 years of development for nothing.
pityJuke · 1h ago
> At the end of June, Le was asked to join a handful of professional gamers onstage for a round of Counter-Strike at a game conference in Austin, Texas.
Conference isn't really the right term here: it's more equivalent to a sports tournament (it was the BLAST Austin Major, with a $1.2 million prize pool). Also, round is confusing given the dual usage, he played for an entire showmatch.
hackitup7 · 2h ago
So many great memories growing up playing this game decades ago, but you can still pick it up and have a blast. Counterstrike is a great example of a simplistic concept executed flawlessly, in a way that a lot of modern games choose not to match. It's the video game equivalent of soccer or beer pong, you can pick it up in 10 minutes and play forever.
Loudergood · 2h ago
Timely, I was just wondering yesterday (as I was launching the BF6 beta) if there was a current FPS with a mod scene like we had for Half Life and BF 1942.
I can't seem to find anything.
redwall_hp · 2h ago
The conclusion I came to is that this is due to the availability of game engines and game distribution, which have made modding pointless. Why expend countless hours building a game mode for someone else's game, in a world where that has copyright implications, when you can just build your own game?
The indie scene blew up, modding is less popular.
justinrubek · 2h ago
Even if you get by the legal implications, you still have to deal with building a sandcastle on a surface that wasn't designed for it. Yes, that has always been the case to varying degrees, but I think it can make a big difference, too. Factorio has a good modding scene, and it's in part because it was wholly and intentionally embraced by the developers in their engine design.
angrydev · 1h ago
A very real impact was that modders got hired for their work. So there are less around from that generation that made literally free games for fun.
0cf8612b2e1e · 1h ago
Modding is hugely poplar in RPGs like Skyrim and Baldurs Gate.
Back then I got dozens of crates that I didn't open, now worth as high as 31$CAD each. I looked it up last week and it's worth over a thousand dollars in Steam. I cashed in on almost half of it and now I have some cash to buy games for my family and friends.
There's actually a mini-documentary about the creation of de_dust2 [0] which I think will be of interest to FPS fans.
I wonder if de_dust2 is the most played FPS map or if it has been dethroned by something like Fortnite or some other shooter map.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FWWhxfGq_yk
I believe de_dust2 is likely still the most played FPS map. Not sure which other map could have dethroned it. It can’t be Fortnite since Fortnite changes the map every few months and nowadays makes a new one every year or so.
I guess Blood Gulch from the time when Halo was super popular was a very popular map as well.
Then you also have 2fort from the Team Fortress games.
But yes I would say de_dust2 is very likely still the most played FPS map and it will likely stay that way.
And there is also the typical sports gambling shit. HLTV the main news source of the pro CS scene is full of gambling ads. Higher tier tournaments often give a segment to gambling people talking about odds between matches. And as you would expect in a scene with rampant gambling there is match fixing. The serious media and the authorities will not look into it because esports is not serious stuff, but people know it’s there. Whenever you see a tier 2 team throw a most winnable match in the weirdest fashion you can see a stream of Twitch chat messages calling it rigged. People know but nothing will be done against it. Check out Richard Lewis if you want more information on that.
https://richardlewis.substack.com/p/prologue-no-one-really-c...
I would love to see a modern shooter with nice graphics and self hostable servers in the same niche as the old CS. But all we got is Valorant and its kernel spyware (oops I mean anticheat). Guess I should just keep player CS1.6 until I die shrug
Skins is literally a money printing machine.
Every other live service manages with non-gambling skins. They have their own problems (usually around FOMO), but nowhere near the literal gambling that is CS.
> Valve would have shut the door on the game
In terms of not having any developers on it, sure, not impossible.
> (and quite possibly the company entirely)
Ahahahaha come on man, even without CS, Valve is one of the most profitable companies of all time.
I mean, that is still CS: you want one without gambling (which is reasonable!)
Uhm, wow. Most winnable matches often enough end when the drugs wear off for hundreds of reasons.
You are looking at it from the wrong angle. From what I have seen, it's rarely a whole team that fucks up while winning. Also: often enough: they don't seem to be aware of the pattern that just occurred in their brains (are not, as far as I learned from Paul E.). I believe these kids are put on drugs without consent.
I have no proof, of course.
I noticed it first in soccer back in '16, I think. Which surprised me because it was not boxing or wrestling or the UFC, where such things are the standard.
Maybe I'm old but I feel as though there's still a place for shooters of this nature. Every time I hear about new seasons dropping for some ultra-popular game I lose interest; I've no desire to keep up with the evolution of a game coordinated by a billion-dollar company to extract money from my wallet after I already paid for it.
But yes, I was never really a 1.6 player but I felt the same way about Garry's Mod maps. Joining a random server and seeing the maps and assets download and never really knowing what you were going to spawn into... it was wonderfully weird in a way that reminds me of the individuality of the Old Internet™. It might be nostalgia talking but there's some crispness and snappiness to the Source engine that games these days don't quite have.
An entire shooter based solely upon the principles of fy_iceworld & gun game would wipe the floor with most other AAA titles on offer right now.
But to be honest, I think it's an artifact of our (or at least my) generation. I've played CS for thousands of hours, same with l4d and cod2/4, and I don't _need_ a battle pass, seasons, constant updates etc. Though when chatting with my ~14 year younger cousin about this some months ago, he said it'd be "boring to play a game that doesn't get updates". So.. different times :)
Larger titles swapped over to more control in order to extract more money from the players, but also control the experience.
There is however some AAA titles every now and then which support hosting your own servers. But they're quite few these days
I'm actually looking for Android (Kindle) game recommendations that are cross platform and allow self-hosted servers.
I miss surf_greatriver and its variants :(
Minh “Gooseman” Le, one of CS’s creators, was a fan of AQ2. Counter-Strike (first released in June 1999 as a Half-Life mod) built on AQ2’s ideas but refined them with better hitboxes, buy menus, maps, and more tactical pacing.
AQ2 is often described as “the bridge between Quake and Counter-Strike”.
The article says that Le created it though:
It's just great - exactly the same game and works very smooth in a browser. I played it briefly for a few months and was happy I was able to get into the top rankings overall.
Just sharing it here if anyone wants to try it out.
Other games have lots of wacky skins and stuff but the Counter Strike games never had that and hopefully never will. Some of the unofficial servers are pretty wacky which is fine as they are unofficial.
CS is not a billion dollar game. CS is a fairly unprofitable game with a giant tumor of a marketplace attached, a significant point of which is being a faux currency that escapes most currency controls
I will admit that gambling $0.16 in skins on pro matches when I was 15 was a lot of fun. Maybe I'm lucky to have gotten away (relatively) unscathed, but I do have a little nostalgia for those days.
Would advise looking into why those skins are so valueable. spoiler: money laundering and hooking kids on gambling
This is closest the article gets to mentioning css and csgo. Both of those games were like 90% of my teens
Lots of history glossed over. Like the maps and plugins/addons. The mappers were legends in their own right
No good surf ("TDM") style games anymore, seems like that game mode has mainly died in favour of the timed surf game-mode.
So now I stick to the 'vanilla' game much more, but without a group of friends that plays regularly, it's a bit of a frustrating experience at times.
Came back to Canada and asked EB games for a copy but they didn’t know what counter strike was, and I didn’t understand that it was a mod for half life
Conference isn't really the right term here: it's more equivalent to a sports tournament (it was the BLAST Austin Major, with a $1.2 million prize pool). Also, round is confusing given the dual usage, he played for an entire showmatch.
I can't seem to find anything.
The indie scene blew up, modding is less popular.
edit: actually, I got it backwards, just browse nexus mods :)
Arma usually gets the more complex and janky stuff (in a fun way). While the others are more modified experiences.
Like Squad, we're they've re-created star wars battlefront
Fond memories of 1.4 and 1.5, when it was still a Half-Life mod.
as_oilrig ftw