Overview

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a first-person shooter video game which is a part of the Counter-Strike series. It was announced to the public on August 12, 2011, and is developed by Valve Corporation and their partner, Hidden Path Entertainment. The game was later released on August 21, 2012 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, and OS X and later Linux as a downloadable title. Visit the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Steam page for more details.

Gameplay

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive makes a few adjustments to the original gameplay formula of the Counter-Strike series. Compared to Counter-Strike: Source, weapon damage models were rebalanced. There is improved bullet penetration through some walls, materials, and objects. The Radio Commands for bots and players have been updated, among other changes.

Economy has been modified. Ammunition no longer needs to be purchased.

In addition to the graphical updates, the HUD, crosshair and buy menu VGUI has been updated.

The game features a Competitive Matchmaking system based on ELO ranks and Skill groups.

The game has support for dedicated servers on PC and Mac only.

Leaderboards were included in initial release, but were cut in the February 17, 2016 update.

The game allows cross-platform multiplayer play between Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. PlayStation 3 was previously said to be included, but later dropped.

Tips and Hints are added to the map loading screen, while Fun facts were added to round-ends that describe interesting facts that happened in the round.

Development

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive started off as an Xbox 360 port of Counter-Strike: Source by Hidden Path Entertainment. Seeing this as an opportunity to expand the franchise, Valve turned it into an entirely new game.

Jess Cliffe confirmed the title "Global Offensive" on the official Steam forums on August 11, 2011, while Valve later confirmed with its official announcement on August 12, 2011

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive uses the latest version of the Source engine and is not built off of Counter-Strike: Source. After the success of the previous game, Valve wanted the newest game in the franchise to cater to both the casual and competitive community by including a matchmaking system as well as support for dedicated servers.

Valve announced the beta would begin in October, but after receiving feedback from professional players who had been invited to playtest earlier versions of the beta, Valve decided to delay the beta. After addressing the majority of the issues the closed beta started on November 30, 2011 to a pool of around 10,000 select players. After almost a year of the closed beta, Valve opened the beta up starting August 14, 2012 to anyone who had pre-ordered the game.

As of yet, the console versions have not been updated and are extremely different when compared to their Steam counterpart. It is currently unknown whether or not Valve has plans for updating these versions.

Post-release

Valve is known for providing active support and continuous updates for its titles, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is no exception. Since the beta ended, Hidden Path Entertainment have stopped its share of the development and Valve has taken over and provided countless updates to the game for everything from bug fixes and gameplay adjustments to new official content like an inventory system, the In-game Store, the weapon finishes, and even added support for the Steam Workshop to allow custom content. Major content DLCs known as Operations are released once several months, each lasting over several seasons, bringing in new permanent content as well as seasonal content.

In the "Hello CS" presentation in China, it was announced that the game's engine would be ported to Source 2 in Summer 2017 along with the addition of a new UI called Panorama, and a special modified version of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive would be released in China, via Perfect World.

Since December 6, 2018, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has become completely free. However, in order to play at prime matches, you need to buy the game for 15$, or reach level 21. Players who bought the game before the update of December 6, 2018, received free prime status and in honor of this they were awarded a special medal named the Loyalty Badge.

Achievements

Achievements, also known as Awards in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, are retained from Counter-Strike: Source.

Achievements are given for completing milestones or notable actions, such as getting 1,000 kills with a particular weapon, or getting four headshots in one round. There are five categories of achievements, progression in the completion of achievements in each category will award the player with medals that can be seen on the leaderboard during matches. The list of achievements is found in the stats menu.