Top 7 Interesting Facts About CS: GO

Released way back in 1999, Counter-Strike, this game is as old as it can get for a modern-day first-person shooter. This game was meant to be a LAN-only or multiplayer game and was released at a time when the internet was still out of reach of anyone. Still, it managed to grow steadily and gained a huge user base loyal to this day. Even more, its unhindered development and constant patches keep it still strong.

While other games like PUBG, Battle Royale, and Fortnite have pulled the young generation the simplicity and strong foundation of Counter-Strike are unique and unfiltered. In this small article, we list some of its most interesting facts that perhaps you missed when you were playing the game.

Step: 1

CS: GO stands for Counter-Strike: Global offensive and is a part of Valve’s small portfolio of games, but the only one that stands firm till today. Released in August of 2012 in collaboration with Hidden Path Entertainment, this is not the first but the 4th game in the series. The name of the series is simply Counter-Strike.

• A fun fact, the logo of Counter-Strike, which is the single most unique and famous entity of the brand, was designed in-house and nobody knows the name of its original designer.

So, the 4th game in the series received the same branding and the suffix, Global Offensive. It was released on all platforms, especially Linux given that the game was pretty famous with students and college-going kids who were primarily programmers.

• So, Windows, OSX, Xbox 360, PS3 were released in 2012 while noting the real audience, Linux was added in 2014.
• And, to this day, CS: GO has been the bread and butter for dorm students.

All the credit goes to its simplicity and straightforward approaches that is challenging and yet thrilling each and every time.

Step: 2

The mission objectives and the storyline haven’t in all this time. The whole game is about two groups: terrorists, and counter-terrorists. The two teams have a single common objective that is to eliminate the other team while also completing some corresponding objectives in the game. So, based on which map and game mode is on, they might have to either defend their hostages or plant a bomb, while counter-terrorists must do the opposite by preventing the bomb from exploding, diffusing it or rescuing the taken hostages. The plot has been told and retold plenty of times in movies, and playing a game was phenomenal. The same plot remains till today.

Step: 3

Global Offensive, in particular, CS: GO, was well-received internationally when it was released. Today, it has been 8 years and it is still going strong. The most interesting part about its loyal fan base is that since its release it has been drawing an estimated number of 11 million players per month, and has gathered active competition among online multiplayer games, a feat that was never imagined in the wildest dreams way back in 1999.

• Valve Corporation devoted a huge sum of money to conduct tournaments that lead to discovering some of the world’s best CS: GO players.
• Some of the first major tournaments, called Majors, awarded $250,000 to the winning team.

Today, they are legends just like Messi and Ronaldo of football. CS: GO is touted as a skill-based game and players devote their careers to this. The prize pools have been generous enough to support them too with sponsors all across the world.

Step: 4

It was only in December of 2018 when the online game was transferred to a free-to-play model. Prior to that players would download patches with activation from online third-party stores and play this game on their laptops. When it transitioned to online-only servers, it required registration and that would cost players at $14.99, and they could legally download the game. But, now it is free for all, across all devices.

• What actually happened in 2018 was that Valve decided to release a battle-royale version of the game under the name Danger Zone, and dropped the price of CS: GO to zero.
• That meant players would get an automated upgrade to ‘Prime Status for Free’.

Step: 5

A small but interesting fact in CS: GO that players might have easily missed is the commission of shadows of real-life objects like persons. It is quite unbelievable that despite such advances in graphics, textures, shadows, dynamic lighting, and stuff, players do not cast shadows. You, as a player, cannot see your own shadow. The reason behind this is not clear so much, but it is a strong factor.

The thing is, the POV cams do not have a shadow render, and hence when in POV view, you cannot see your own shadow. It is a weird thing, but the truth. However, it does not affect or even be noticed by anyone, so it doesn’t hurt the gameplay by any means.

Step: 6

If you are a fan of CSGO knife skins, you would be disheartened to learn that this was only introduced later when the price was dropped to zero, because its much business came from users buying and selling skins online. So, Valve decided to let players play for free instead.

• When it first launched, CS: GO didn’t have the feature of skins, which means, you could not change the appearance of weapons and stuff.
• CS: GO, when launched in 2012, also didn’t come with the competitive mode that is now its bread and butter.

The above things meant that there was no matchmaking feature, and no skins of any kind. Today, players get them as rewards when they clear special objectives, but back to the olden days, it was all default. While today, skins like Dragon Lore sell for as high as $60,000, in the early days it didn’t exist at all.

Step: 7

Finally, there is something that the most avid players would know, keeping the tutorials on means that you can locate the bomb even in smoke.

• Because players find it extremely difficult to locate the bomb in deep smoke, turning on the tutorials marks the exact location using a green crosshair.
• It is simple and a nice trick to play when the other teams smoke the place.