



Release
When Counter-Strike was published by Sierra Entertainment/Vivendi Universal Games, it was bundled with Team Fortress Classic,Opposing Force multiplayer, and the Wanted, Half-Life: Absolute Redemption and Firearms mods."
On March 24, 1999, Planet Half-Life opened its Counter-Strike section. Within two weeks, the site had received 10,000 hits. On June 19, 1999, the first public beta of Counter-Strike was released, followed by numerous further "beta" releases. On April 12, 2000, Valve announced that the Counter-Strike developers and Valve had teamed up.
The non-beta public release dates of Counter-Strike are as follows:
- Version 1.0: November 1, 2000
- Version 1.1: March 13, 2001
- Version 1.3: September 12, 2001
- Version 1.4: April 24, 2002
- Version 1.5: June 12, 2002
- Version 1.6: September 12, 2003
Counter-Strike: Source
Counter-Strike received a major technology update and refresh on November 1, 2004 with the release of Counter-Strike: Source, which was heavily updated using Valve's Source game engine to take advantage of more modern graphics and audio hardware. However, the original Counter-Strike is still available and played by many people via Steam, as the two variants are quite different, and players inevitably prefer one variant over the other. Both versions continue to co-exist today.
Counter-Strike was originally played online through the WON gaming service, which was shut down in 2004, forcing players to switch to Steam. The non-Steam version of Counter-Strike (version 1.5) can still be downloaded from sites such as FilePlanet. Due to the closure of WON, part of the player community responded by creating their own WON network, dubbed WON2.
In March 2007, Valve implemented mandatory advertisements through Steam in official maps and in the game's GUI overhead. Customers have expressed frustration with the ads, including an over 200 page thread on Valve's official forums, saying that they violate original terms of service and distract from the game. The thread was later deleted by an unknown moderator
Counter-Strike Online
Counter-Strike Online is available in South Korea, Taiwan, Japan, Singapore, and Indonesia, and is now fully online. It is developed by Nexon Corporation with oversight from license-holder Valve Corporation, and is an attempt to increase market share of Valve's games in the Asian gaming market.
Counter strike Global Efensive
On August 12, 2011, it was confirmed that a new Counter Strike game is currently in development at Valve Software and Hidden Path Entertainment, which also codevelops Counter-Strike: Source, going under the title Global Offensive. The game is played on game consoles (such as PS3, Xbox 360, etc.) and PC as well as Mac OSX and is aimed as a competition to other FPS games such as the Call of Duty and the Battlefield series. The closed beta testing is out on November 30, 2011, only for those who got the keys in "Penny Arcade Expo" and Eurogamer. It will be opened once Valve thinks that the server is ready.
Controversy
Counter-Strike faced controversy in April 2007 when Jack Thompson, now a disbarred attorney from Florida, predicted that the perpetrator of the Virginia Tech Massacre had been trained to kill in the game, well before Seung-Hui Cho (the shooter) was identified. News sources originally stated that Seung-Hui Cho only played the game in high school, however no video games whatsoever were found in the gunman's dorm room, and there is no evidence that he ever played Counter-Strike.Thompson also blamed Counter-Strike for the February 14, 2008 Northern Illinois University shooting perpetrated by Steven Kazmierczak on the day after the shooting. It is reported that Kazmierczak did play Counter-Strike in college.
On January 17, 2008, a Brazilian federal court order prohibiting all sales of Counter-Strike and EverQuest and imposing the immediate withdrawal of these from all stores began to be enforced. The federal Brazilian judge Carlos Alberto Simões de Tomaz, of the Minas Gerais judiciary section, ordered the ban in October 2007 because, according to him, the games "bring imminent stimulus to the subversion of the social order, attempting against the democratic and rightful state and against the public safety". As of June 18, 2009, a regional federal court order lifting the prohibition on the sale of Counter-Strike was published. The game is now being sold again in Brazil.
