Professional Counter-Strike competition
Professional Counter-Strike competition involves professional gamers competing in the first-person shooter game series Counter-Strike.
The original game, released in 🌈 1999, is a mod developed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe of the 1998 video game Half-Life, published by 🌈 Valve.
Currently, the games that have been played competitively include Counter-Strike (CS also called CS 1.
6), Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ), Counter-Strike: 🌈 Source (CS:S) and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO).
Major esports championships began in 2001 with the Cyberathlete Professional League Winter Championship, won 🌈 by Ninjas in Pyjamas.
[1][2]History [ edit ]
The Counter-Strike series has over 20 years of competitive history beginning with the original 🌈 Counter-Strike.
Tournaments for early versions of the game have been hosted since 2000, but the first prestigious international tournament was hosted 🌈 in Dallas, Texas at the 2001 Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) Winter Championship, won by the Swedish team Ninjas in Pyjamas.
The 🌈 tournament offered a $150,000 prize pool and became known as the first "Major".
[1] The final significant update to the original 🌈 Counter-Strike game was version 1.
6 in 2003, and so the game became known as Counter-Strike 1.6 ("CS 1.6").
2001 Winter CPL 🌈 Counter-Strike tournament
In 2002, the World Cyber Games became the next tournament to host competitive Counter-Strike, followed by the Electronic Sports 🌈 World Cup in 2003.
These, along with the bi-annual CPL tournaments, were the dominant Majors of CS 1.6 through 2007.
CPL ceased 🌈 operation in 2008, but another league, ESL, then added Counter-Strike to its Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) series.
These tournaments continued for 🌈 four years.
[1] The years of 2002-07 are considered Counter-Strike's first Golden Age, as the game's popularity and market-share eclipsed all 🌈 others in the fledgling esports industry.[citation needed]
Valve struggled to iterate and evolve on CS 1.
6 because of its high skill 🌈 ceiling and gameplay.
The Counter-Strike Xbox release had limited success as compared to that of Halo and Call of Duty.
The first 🌈 official sequel was Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S), released on November 1, 2004.
The game was criticized by the competitive community, who believed 🌈 the game's skill ceiling was significantly lower than that of CS 1.6.
This caused a divide in the competitive community as 🌈 to which game to play competitively.
[3] Valve, sponsors, and tournament organizers were advocating for the newer CS:S to be played 🌈 at tournaments, but the large majority of professional CS players refused to play it due to its perceived shortcomings.
[citation needed] 🌈 Counter-Strike esports gradually decreased in popularity during the late 2000s and early 2010s.
This was in part due to the fractured 🌈 competitive scene, but also due to the newcomer MOBA genre overcoming Counter-Strike's previous stranglehold on the team-based esport market.
The release 🌈 of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) in 2012 reunited the competitive community of Counter-Strike, ushering in a new era of esports 🌈 relevance for the franchise.
Initially, the game was criticized for imbalanced gameplay, poor mechanics and bugs.
However, within several months the gameplay 🌈 improved after updates from Valve.
The advent of video game streaming services such as UStream, Justin.
tv and Twitch increased the popularity 🌈 of competitive Counter-Strike.
On September 16, 2013, Valve announced a US$250,000 community-funded prize pool for its first CS:GO Major Championship; the 🌈 money was funded through the "Arms Deal" update, which created in-game cosmetics that players could purchase.
Valve also announced that the 🌈 first Major would take place in Sweden at DreamHack Winter 2013.
[1] The Valve-sponsored Majors would go on to be the 🌈 most important and prestigious tournaments in the Global Offensive esports scene.
In October 2015, a number of professional esports organizations with 🌈 Counter-Strike teams announced the formation of a trade union that set several demands for future tournament attendance.
The announcement was a 🌈 publicly posted email written by Alexander Kokhanovsky, CEO of Natus Vincere, that was sent to organizers of major esports events.
Teams 🌈 that were part of the union included Natus Vincere, Team Liquid, Counter Logic Gaming, Cloud9, Virtus.
pro, Team SoloMid, Fnatic, Ninjas 🌈 in Pyjamas, Titan and Team EnVyUs.
Teams in this union would not attend Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments with prize pools of 🌈 less than $75,000.
[4] In 2016, the World eSports Association (WESA) was founded by ESL with many esports teams, including Fnatic, 🌈 Natus Vincere, Team EnVyUs and FaZe Clan,[5] though FaZe Clan left soon after the league's formation.
[6] In its announcement, WESA 🌈 said it would "further professionalize eSports by introducing elements of player representation, standardized regulations, and revenue sharing for teams".
They also 🌈 planned to help fans and organizers by "seeking to create predictable schedules."[5]
Valve's decisions have a strong influence on the competitive 🌈 metagame.
Decisions such as the removal of old maps and additions of new maps are often met with criticism, as well 🌈 as changes made to certain weapons' performance characteristics.
In 2016, Valve was "heavily criticized" for the removal of the map Inferno 🌈 and its replacement, Nuke, in the competitive map pool.
[7][8] The release of CS 1.
6 in 2003 saw a contentious nerf 🌈 of the iconic AWP sniper rifle by increasing its draw time.
This significantly reduced the ability of a player armed with 🌈 an AWP to simultaneously engage multiple targets.
The AWP was again the subject of a controversial nerf in 2015 when players' 🌈 movement speed and acceleration was decreased while the weapon was equipped.
Valve has also implemented new coaching rules restricting the ability 🌈 of communication between coaches and players during a match, and altered a 15-year precedent by increasing the duration of each 🌈 round and bomb timer in 2015.[9]
By 2014, 25 million copies of the Counter-Strike series were sold.
The game's fan base remains 🌈 strong, having reached a new record of 1.
4 million concurrent players in March 2023, surpassing the game's previous record of 🌈 1.
3 million concurrent players in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.[10][2][11]
Tournament system [ edit ]
Counter-Strike tournaments can be hosted by any 🌈 entity, and do not have a single official event organizer (like FIFA in football association, for example).
The Major Championships, sponsored 🌈 by Valve and held by different organizers twice a year, are the most prestigious tournaments, although they may not necessarily 🌈 have the highest prizes.
Most of the big teams compete, most of the time, in world tournaments that bring together teams 🌈 from all corners of the world.
[12][13] Some of the most notable major tournaments are organized by ESL, such as the 🌈 Intel Extreme Masters and ESL Pro League, and by BLAST, such as the BLAST Premier series.
Tournaments that do not have 🌈 a worldwide character are usually organized for teams of lower level, serving as qualifiers for the main tournaments.[14][12]
Teams rankings are 🌈 published by HLTV and ESL, who use various criteria to determine the best ranked teams from the most recent tournaments.
These 🌈 rankings are then used by some tournament organizers to directly invite teams, depending on their rank.
In 2023, Valve announced that 🌈 starting in 2025, only the official Valve ranking system could be used to generate invitations, and all other "large-scale" events 🌈 need to use open qualifiers.
Media coverage [ edit ]
As the game and the scene grew in popularity, companies, including WME/IMG 🌈 and Turner Broadcasting, began to televise Global Offensive professional games, with the first being ELEAGUE Major 2017, held at the 🌈 Fox Theatre and broadcast on US cable television network TBS in 2016.
[15] On August 22, 2018, Turner announced its further 🌈 programming of Global Offensive with ELEAGUE's Esports 101: CSGO and ELEAGUE CS:GO Premier 2018's docuseries on TBS.[16]
Controversies [ edit ]Cheating 🌈 [ edit ]
Cheating, particularly through the use of software hacks on online servers, has been a problem throughout the history 🌈 of Counter-Strike and generally results in a game ban if discovered.
A Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) ban is the most common way 🌈 in which players are banned.
VAC is a system designed by Valve to detect cheats on computers.
Any time a player connects 🌈 to a VAC-secured server and a cheat is detected, the user is kicked from the server, given a permanent lifetime 🌈 ban and barred from playing on any VAC-secured servers.
[17] Professional players play online on independent platform servers hosted by leagues 🌈 such as ESEA or Faceit, which have proprietary anti-cheat programs.[18]
Linus "b0bbzki" Lundqvist was the first known professional player to be 🌈 banned in Global Offensive.
Hovik "KQLY" Tovmassian was one of the highest-profile players to be issued a VAC ban.
KQLY was banned, 🌈 along with several other professional players, such as Gordon "Sf" Giry, while KQLY was playing for France's best team, Titan.
[19] 🌈 Vinicius "v$m" Moreira from Brazil was VAC-banned while he was playing for Detona Gaming.[20]
Cheating has also occurred at LAN tournaments, 🌈 and players who cheat at organized tournaments may receive permanent bans or may be dismissed from their team.
In 2018, at 🌈 the eXTREMESLAND ZOWIE Asia CS:GO, Nikhil "forsaken" Kumawat of OpTic India was caught cheating mid-match using aimbot during a tournament 🌈 game against Revolution, a Vietnamese Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team.
[21] The tournament had a $100,000 prize pool.
[22] OpTic India was disqualified 🌈 and Kumawat was dismissed from the team.[23]
In 2020, the Esports Integrity Commission (ESIC) banned over 37 coaches[24] due to abuse 🌈 of a spectator mode bug.
Valve also has punished these coaches from a number of CS:GO Majors with the severity dependant 🌈 on the number of times the bug was abused.[25]
On 15 April 2021, Valve updated event guidelines to allow players with 🌈 VAC banned accounts to compete again in Valve sponsored events.
[26] The updated rules state: A VAC ban will only disqualify 🌈 a player from an event if it was either received less than 5 years prior, or if it was received 🌈 at any time after their first participation in a Valve-sponsored event.
Match fixing [ edit ]
Players have also been banned for 🌈 match fixing.
In August 2014, two CS:GO teams, iBUYPOWER and NetcodeGuides.
com, were involved in a match-fixing scandal that has been cited 🌈 as "the first large match fixing scandal" in the CS:GO community.
[27] iBUYPOWER, who was heavily favored to win, lost in 🌈 a resounding 16-to-4 defeat to NetcodeGuides.com.
It was later discovered in a tip to Dot Esports that the match was fixed.[28]
On 🌈 20 Jan 2021, ESIC issues sanctions against 35 players[29] for betting related offences primarily in the Australian CS:GO scene.
On the 🌈 31st of March 2021 the Commissioner of the ESIC, Ian Smith, has revealed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) 🌈 is now involved in the ongoing investigation into match-fixing in North American Counter-Strike, which has been underway since September 2020.
[30] 🌈 ESIC is collaborating with federal law enforcement as part of a larger investigation into players bribed to fix matches by 🌈 outside "betting syndicates".
Gambling [ edit ]
Following the introduction of weapon skins into Global Offensive with the Arms Deal update in 🌈 August 2013, a virtual economy formed around the skins based on rarity and desirability.
Because of this, a number of skin-trading 🌈 and gambling sites using the Steamworks API were created.
Initially, these sites focused on wagering skins on the outcomes of professional 🌈 and semi-professional CS:GO matches, in the vein of sports betting.
However, some of these sites began to offer casino gambling functionality 🌈 in 2015, allowing users to gamble their skins on the outcome of roulette spins, coin flips, dice rolls, and other 🌈 games of chance.
[31][32] According to research firm Eilers & Krejcik Gaming, players and esports fans wagered $2.
3 billion in 2015,[33] 🌈 and $5 billion in 2016[34] on CS:GO skins.
In June and July of that year, two lawsuits were filed against specific 🌈 gambling sites and Valve, arguing that Valve allowed their skins to be used for illegal underage gambling.
[35][36] Valve began to 🌈 take steps to prevent these sites from using Steamworks for gambling purposes, and several of the sites ceased operating as 🌈 a result.
[37] In July 2018, Valve disabled the opening of containers in Belgium and the Netherlands after the in-game loot 🌈 boxes appeared to violate Dutch and Belgium gambling laws.
[38] However, some parties have tried to contest Valve's gambling rules.[39]
