Throughout the years, many first-person shooters have come and gone, but one title has shined eternally in the gaming world. Ever since its beta release in the summer of 1999, Counter-Strike has won the hearts of millions of fans worldwide. Not only has it outlived every single one of its competitors, but it has also managed to stay relevant in the esports scene even after 21 years of its release.
The renowned video game Half-Life was developed by Valve in 1998. Counter-Strike was first released as a mod to Half-Life on June 19th, 1999. Since then, the game has experienced countless updates being added to it with the flow of time, and the player counts of the game also kept rising simultaneously. Soon, a huge esports scene developed around the game and the prize pool surrounding the tournaments of CS 1.6 skyrocketed consequently.
It can’t be denied that Counter-Strike acted as a pioneer among video games to push esports to the mainstream world. More and more started looking at gaming as a viable career opportunity which helped shape the esports world to what it is today.
After the groundbreaking success of CS 1.6, Valve released its successor – Counter-Strike: Source. Source was also a remarkable success, but was short-lived as it was later overshadowed by the next version, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Although CSGO wasn’t a huge hit at the time of its release, it was quick to gain traction after a few updates to the game. From then onwards, it was all an uphill climb for CSGO. The numbers revolving around the competitive shooter by Valve – be it the player count or the prize pool – experienced a steady increase with each passing month.
Currently, CSGO is one of the most played games of the world and the most played video game on Steam, with the average concurrent player count peaks breaking the mark of one million on a regular basis. These past months also have been excellent for CSGO. With Valve implementing constant updates to the game and adding a plethora of new stuff to it, the players of the game are currently more satisfied than ever.
While it’s true that the player counts of CSGO took a hit after the release of VALORANT, it regained its pace quickly and continued to rule the Steam charts to this day.
Last year, Valve had re-implemented the old version of Dust 2 to the game as a tribute to CS 1.6 and to celebrate the 20 year anniversary of the game. They also added a new CS20 case to the game for the same purpose.
This year too, fans are excited to see if Valve has anything in the bag for them. While Valve has already tweeted out the fact that the legendary shooter has turned 21 today, as of now they’ve made no promises regarding if they’ll organize anything for the players of CSGO.
