Counter-Strike
Counter-Strike
Someone just made a working game of chess in CSGO
M Alzamora
Reddit user Imania is a prolific creator, bending the Source Engine to his will over the years making more than 80 maps and mods for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. In his latest creation, he has decided to bring one of the world’s oldest popular games to one of its newest. Imania has ported such games as UNO, Connect 4, and Golf It! to Counter-Strike, but this time they decided to stay …
Counter-Strike
CSGO gets new patch with stickers, pins for Half-Life Alyx release
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive got its first patch in eighteen days, bringing with it three new opportunities to roll the dice in the form of a patch pack, sticker capsule, and pin capsule to commemorate the release of Half-Life Alyx. The update also added an exclusive pin and music kit for anyone who had preordered Valve’s VR hardware, the Index. The patch, sticker, and pin capsules are all available now in …
Counter-Strike
ESL One Rio Major moved to November, will have $2 million prize pool
M Alzamora
Valve and ESL have announced that the ESL One Rio Major has been moved to November. ESL sent out a press release confirming the news. The release cited COVID-19 as the reason for the move. According to the release, ESL will host ESL One Rio in the timeslot reserved for CSGO’s second major of the year, and that the two Majors have effectively combined their prize pools. ESL One Rio …
Counter-Strike
Astralis signs es3tag, plans to compete with 6-man CSGO roster
M Alzamora
Danish Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team Astralis announced an agreement this morning between itself and Team Heroic to acquire Patrick “es3tag” Hansen. Astralis announced the deal early this morning through an official press release. While the signing itself is impactful in and of itself, Astralis positioned the move as a transition from a five-player roster to a six-player roster. At its most basic, the Astralis organization now has an official, permanent stand-in that …
Counter-Strike
Team Vitality’s newest member goes 0-18 in ESL Pro League game
Steven Rondina
Team Vitality may be off to a decent start in the ESL Pro League Season 11’s European division. But that isn’t the case for newly added player Kévin “misutaaa” Rabier. After winning its first two series of the group stage, Vitality faced off against Team Spirit. After picking up a win on Inferno, misutaaa laid a goose egg on Dust 2. The player went 0-18 on the map, failing to pick …
Counter-Strike
Boost your CSGO FPS with these NVIDIA Control Panel settings
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive may have turned eight years old last October, but with CSGO hitting one million players for the first time ever last weekend, everyone is probably wondering what the best settings are for the competitive shooter. While there’s a ton more going on under the hood in CSGO than its graphics, that doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to tweak. Frames per second, or FPS, is an incredibly important …
Counter-Strike
Flashpoint reveals new online schedule to combat coronavirus
M Alzamora
After canceling its LAN tournament on Monday evening, Flashpoint made sure that fans knew that they would be back. The league kept its promise, releasing a revised schedule for the competition that now takes place online rather than in the studio. Friday marks the end of Flashpoint’s short hiatus that officially started the evening of March 16. An official announcement from FP revealed that the league had chosen to move …
News
14-year-old CSGO player m0NESY just got an invite to the FPL
M Alzamora
At the beginning of January 2020, famed CIS roster Natus Vincere signed a little known 14-year-old Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player to its academy team roster. The roster, known as Na`Vi Junior, is an effort by the organization a pathway to the pro scene, helping its younger players understand not only what it’s like to work inside of a team, but also improving on more general skills that the players will …
Flashpoint moves to online due to coronavirus, schedule to follow
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
New Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league Flashpoint is delaying its live event portion and moving competition to an online venue. The start date for online play has yet to be announced. Flashpoint announced the news in a tweet from its official Twitter account, following ESL Pro League’s decision to split season 11 of EPL into two separate regional competitions. ESL Pro League made the decision late last week to make major …
NiP decimates Astralis in ESL Pro League opening upset
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
Ninjas in Pyjamas shocked an international audience on the opening day of ESL Pro League, defeating Astralis by a combined score of 32-14 over two maps. The match also drew a massive crowd, That no one saw this one coming is an understatement, especially considering the way the map veto went. Ninjas and Astralis removed their respective permabans in Dust 2 and Mirage before NiP went on the offensive, picking …
Half-Life: Alyx content for CSGO likely includes pins and patches
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
With Valve’s new VR title Half-Life: Alyx releasing in a little under a week, fans are really starting to wonder what kind of “exclusive content” will come bundled with the Valve’s first original release in close to a decade. In February, WIN.gg ran down some possibilities concerning what Alyx’s exclusive CSGO content could actually be. While all of those options are still on the table, an even bigger possibility just …
Steam hits 20M players as CSGO, Rainbow Six have record days
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
Steam has had a record day today, posting the highest number of users logged in at over 20 million people. It’s been a record day for the platform and for developer Valve. A new record number of players for Valve’s premier first-person shooter, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, certainly helped Steam hit the milestone. The competitive FPS also set a record for most concurrent players of all time on Saturday morning, breaking …
CSGO hits another new record with well over one million players
M Alzamora
News
After breaking the one million player mark yesterday for this first time in the franchise’s 20-year history, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has done it once again this morning. After posting an all-time high early Saturday, CSGO smashed it’s record once again on March 15 with 1,024,845 concurrent players, all planting bombs and forgetting to buy defuse kits as one. While the record-breaking weekend may have something to do with the increasing …
Match predictions for Dignitas versus Orgless in Flashpoint S1
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
Orgless will take on a reborn Dignitas and some of the most famous players in the world in what might be the most interesting matchup of Flashpoint’s opening weekend. Dignitas Dignitas doesn’t feel comfortable in North America if Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” is to be believed, but that doesn’t lessen the team’s status as a Flashpoint contender. The only thing is, GeT_RiGhT and company have a stand-in playing with them for the …
EPL will have NA and EU Champions and new groups in Season 11
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
For the first time in history, ESL Pro League will have two league champions for Season 11. ESL has announced ESL Pro League has split into four groups in order to limit travel for participating Counter-Strike: Global Offensive teams, meaning that both Europe and North America will have its own grand finals and respective champions. EPL has been split into four regional groups, according to an update posted to the …
Early predictions for the first week of new Flashpoint CSGO league
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
With just two days to spare, Flashpoint secured its final two member teams ahead of the league’s opening games on Friday as we break down Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s first week of franchised play. Flashpoint got in under the wire, with organizations coming seemingly out of nowhere to take the two finals spots as FunPlus Phoenix picked up the entire Heroic roster. Group A contains two of FLASHPOINT’s founding member teams …
forZe and ESPADA are the early favorites at ESL Rio CIS Minor
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
This year, ESL One Rio’s CIS Minor qualifiers will feature two teams new to the Minor circuit alongside six that have been there multiple times before. WINNERS League Season 3 champions ESPADA will make their debut at the CIS Minor, competing alongside Hard Legion Esports, ForZe, Winstrike Team, Gambit Youngsters, Syman Gaming, Team Spirit, and Team Unique. Just like the other three Minor tournaments, the CIS Minor format has two …
Renegades, Order, ViCi Gaming among ESL Rio Asia Minor teams
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
Even though ESL One Rio is still a month away, fans aren’t that far off from what is considered the tournament’s technical start point in this year’s ESL One Rio’s regional Minors. Over the past week, teams that qualified through the Rio Major’s open qualifiers finished up the week either taking home one of the limited spots in the Minor or by packing their suitcases, ready to go home and …
ESL making backup plans for Rio Major in case of coronavirus issues
M Alzamora
Counter-Strike
According a statement from ESL’s head of global PR Christopher Flato, the ESL One Rio Major is scheduled to go on as planned but the company is making backup plans, just in case. Several high-profile tournaments have changed their locations or canceled events completely due to the outbreak of the coronavirus. WIN.gg reached out to ESL regarding the status of the event, with the organizer issuing a statement in response. …
FunPlus Phoenix to enter Flashpoint league with Heroic roster
Olivia Richman
News
The upcoming Flashpoint league has been accumulating a lot of hype in the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community. The organization-owned league has also been getting a lot of attention from pros CSGO teams. Now it seems to have drawn in FunPlus Phoenix. FPX is a Chinese organization that have mostly made a name for themselves in the League of Legends scene. Against all odds, they became the Worlds champions last year, solidifying …
Counter-Strike has long been among the biggest titles in esports and competitive gaming, even going back to esports’ deepest roots from decades past. What’s more, the game continues going strong today, with developer and publisher Valve releasing the latest iteration of the franchise in 2023. The newest version, Counter-Strike 2, has not been without its issues. But its popularity continues the enduring prominence of the Counter-Strike series, signaling that the venerated franchise is likely here to stay for many years yet to come.
But how did the franchise come be to so prominent in the esports space, and role does CS2 have to play in the industry moving forward?
Counter-Strike has roots in the beginnings of esports
Counter-Strike was unquestionably one of the biggest drivers of what we would today consider to be early professional esports movement. It was far from alone, and it wasn’t the most advanced. That likely was StarCraft: Brood War, a real-time strategy game from famed developer Blizzard that caught on in South Korea and led to a professional scene in the country well ahead of any examples of esports industry elsewhere in the world.
But outside of Korea, Counter-Strike quickly became the driving force behind competitive gaming and esports. First released in 1999 as a modification for popular first-person shooter Half-Life, the game was easy to pick up and play for many gamers. Half-Life was borderline ubiquitous software for gamers with a PC, and adding a mod to it was as simple as downloading and applying said mod. So it was that Counter-Strike began to catch fire and spread across the world.
As it spread, so too did its competitive play. Early competitions often centered around online play, most prominently including the Cyberathlete Amateur League (CAL) in North America and the Clanbase Eurocup in Europe. But live, in-person tournaments, similar to those enjoyed by StarCraft players and fans in Korea, were also rising in prominence.
Within just a few years, there were a number of major annual tournaments being held for the original version of Counter-Strike. Notable international tournament organizers included the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) in the United States, the Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC) in France, and the World Cyber Games (WCG) in Korea. This was in addition to many other regional tournaments through which teams could test their mettle and battle over smaller prizes.
But even at bigger tournaments, prizes weren’t what they are today, and in general there was far less money available to professional Counter-Strike players than there is in today’s thriving esports industry which sees many players and teams playing at the full-time pro level. That’s a far cry from a time when perhaps a small handful of players were able to make a true living through playing CS alone, and even them, it was often a modest one.
Counter-Strike 2 at the fore of a bigger esports scene than ever before
Counter-Strike 2 was released to a far different esports space than that which the original Counter-Strike occupied. But what exactly is it that has changed the scene so much, besides the accrual of years?
Esports betting is at the top of the list. The sports betting industry is growing and expanding around the world each and every year, and esports has absolutely been a part of that. As esports betting continues to grow and thrive, it brings its benefits to the games that are being bet on. And Counter-Strike 2 is at the top of that list.
These benefits have arrived through a myriad of means. Fan interest in tournaments has gone up and become more consistent with betting markets available for each and every game played, which further incentivizes tournament organizers and their sponsoring partners. But those partners are also now more likely to work with the pro teams and players themselves. Betting operators are among the most common and most generous sponsors in the pro CS2 space, showing how esports betting’s rise has contributed to Counter-Strike’s continued prominence in esports and competitive gaming as a whole.
