Counter-Strike Message Board

Where there is demand, there's money ready to change hands. And boy is there a lot of money changing hands over Counter-Strike.Read more...

A user on Reddit has posted a decompiled module that claims Valve's anti-cheat service, VAC, is quietly going through your browser history and sending results back to its servers. Something Valve boss Gabe Newell has made a public statement to deny.Read more...

This past weekend SNL Korea parodied Counter-Strike and featured appearances from top StarCraft players.Read more...

Last month, there was a Counter-Strike Online 2 contest contest. The top prize was a pig. Like, an actual pig. Ladies and gents, we have a winner.Read more...

So McDonalds in Sweden held a competition earlier in the year. The winner got to name a burger. And now we have a burger named after an eSports team.Read more...

Never underestimate how much someone is willing to spend on a digital item they can use in a game. First, we had the people who paid way too much for weed emoticons and digital stickers. This time, we've got someone that paid nearly $200 for a digital gun (pictured above) from Counter Strike: Global Offensive.Read more...

Yesterday was the 12th anniversary of 9/11. And one bar in Shenzhen, China apparently decided to throw a party—complete with unsettling cosplay. Hey, the bar said it was a fun party!Read more...

Once you log enough hours into a multiplayer game, you start noticing patterns. Things people like to do in games, sure—but also what kinds of people you're likely to find in any given game.Read more...

This information is coming to me via a blurry video and Google Translate, so I make only a slight claim of accuracy on this. I’m fact, I’m going to create a pseudonym to deliver it. Look over there while I change my clothes. No peeking, now! I’m shy. Right! Ready! Hello, I am Graham Journalism: Games Journalist. I used to host the late night Channel 5 show Game Pad from my front room, but a scandal and a few years in prison has seen me retreat from the public eye. But I’m back now, and my community service demands I make use of my skills. The other day I accidentally Googled “Counter-Strike 2″, a finger slip that has proved more than fortunate. It turns out there is such a thing for the Asian free-to-play scene, and it’s madder than you can possibly imagine. It’s not out yet, but Counter-Strike Online 2 is basically APB.(more…)

Three gamers have sued the ESEA League, one of the largest PC gaming leagues, for the surreptitious installation on their computers of malware that "mined" the virtual currency called bitcoins, netting a rogue ESEA employee some $3,700 back in April. Their lawsuit seeks class action status. The suit was filed in San Francisco on Wednesday in California state court. The plaintiffs, Kevin Gallette, Jackson Smith and Roy Han, allege that the bitcoin-mining malware required so much of their computers' processing power that it damaged their video cards. Several allegations of GPU damage were made in the ESEA League's official forums as the scandal unfolded. Bitcoins are a virtual currency that are "mined" by resolving a very complex cryptographic equation, taking large and prolonged amounts of processing. Compiling a large network of computers, either knowing or unknowing, to divide the workload is one way of doing that more efficiently. The concept is that a computer sitting idle gives its GPU over to the mining application. In a statement on May 1, ESEA League's parent company, E-Sports Entertainment Association, admitted to the installation of bitcoin-mining code on users' computers through the ESEA League client that handles matchmaking and other functions. ESEA accused an unnamed employee of doing so for personal gain. ESEA donated all money made from the mining, plus a matching amount, to charity, increased prize pools, asked any users who suffered hardware damage to file a support ticket, and promised to sanction the employee responsible. ESEA League has been in existence for about 10 years, supporting games such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, and League of Legends. ESEA said the bitcoin-mining project began as an internal experiment to see how mining worked, and whether it could become a feature that added value. This was around the time bitcoins' exchange rate soared past $260 per 1. It's now around $70. Management ordered the mining experiment scrapped, the ESEA said, but an unnamed employee still inserted the code into an update for the ESEA client that all users later downloaded. From about April 13 to the end of the month, $3,713.55 worth of bitcoins were mined by ESEA League users. ESEA said this employee did so without authorization and for personal gain. Some users complained the malware fried their video cards, causing them to operate at extreme temperatures for prolonged times, resulting in video errors. Plaintiffs Gallette, Smith and Han all allege the same thing; Gallette and Smith say they paid $500 for their video cards; Han said he paid $70 for his. They paid about $300 each to replace them. Further, the three say their electricity bills jumped an extra $30 in the month their computers were running the bitcoin mining malware. The three plaintiffs seek class action status for their complaint, the return, to users, of any funds made from bitcoin mining performed by their computers, compensatory damages for the cost of their ruined hardware and electric bills, legal fees and unspecified punitive damages. The case is Kevin Gallette et al. vs. E-Sports Entertainment, llc, number CGC-13-532593. Kotaku has reached out to Craig Levine, the co-owner of ESEA, for comment on the lawsuit and to inquire further how ESEA has handled this matter since May 1. Any reply the ESEA gives will be updated here. To contact the author of this post, write to owen@kotaku.com or find him on Twitter @owengood.

Minh Le's Tactical Intervention had a long, arduous journey. Now, many years of development and one not-so-successful launch later, the multiplayer shooter is set to find home on Steam. Like Counter-Strike, Tactical Intervention promises intense team-based tactical shooting gameplay, but with a few new elements such as car chases, and realistic locations including shopping malls, industrial parks, subway stations and skyscrapers. Tactical Intervention will be released on Steam this August as a free-to-play title. The screenshots below should give an idea on what it will look like. Questions? Comments? Contact the author of this post at andras-AT-kotaku-DOT-com.

You might want to think twice before cheating in front of, if not being a jerk to fellow Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players now. For all you know, they might be an "investigator" capable of banning you. According to the Counter-Strike blog, Valve is debuting something called "Overwatch." Although in beta right now, the idea is to let the community regulate itself by "allowing qualified and experienced members of the community...to review reports of disruptive behavior, determine if those reports are valid, and apply temporary bans if appropriate." People with that power are called investigators, and they can watch a suspect's replays to determine their fate. Multiple people will review the same suspect, it sounds like, and their judgments must collectively agree an offense has occurred. Watch this video by WatchSpade if you'd like to see the program in action: How investigators are picked is unclear, although Valve notes that they look at competitive wins, account age, hours played, Skill Group, and low report counts. I'm guessing that means skilled players with a good reputation are more likely to be picked. Since the program is at an early stage at the moment, Valve says "the system will issue fewer cases and the results will be reviewed and analyzed before any bans go into effect." It'll be curious, though, to see if a community-run regulation system results in a better playing environment in Counter-Strike than a purely developer-run one. Via PC Gamer

Unless you're actually a player, you probably think Counter-Strike is a bit old-fashioned. A little stale compared to other modern shooters. And hey, I think you're right. I also think that doesn't matter here, because this is a Korean commercial commissioned in 2012 for an Asia-only Counter-Strike game most of you will never have played anyway. So...just enjoy it!

Launching today in beta across a selection of popular titles, Steam Trading Cards are collectibles Steam users gather while playing their favorite games, with sets tradable for game badges, profile backgrounds, emoticons, coupons, and more. As if hunting for achievements wasn't enough. They're a means of rewarding players for playing the games they love, while tormeting those of us easily susceptible to the collector mindset. Starting today, players of Don't Starve, Dota 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Team Fortress 2, Portal 2 and Half-Life 2 will start earning trading cards, with the service expanding to more titles in the coming months. Want to know how it works? I don't. If I did, I'd risk getting drawn into the latest in a lifelong series of card hunts that have left my psyche a shattered ruin. You can find out more about Steam Trading Cards here.

ESEA League, one of the largest PC gaming leagues, has admitted to putting code into the league's client software to "mine" bitcoins, the open-source Internet currency now exchanging for around $130 per. The league is offering free memberships as some members complain the code damaged their video cards. Eric Thunberg, a league administrator (who goes by the forum handle ipkane) and one of the owners of E-Sports Entertainment Association, told users the inclusion of Bitcoin-mining code began as an April Fools joke that he and ESEA's senior software developer intended to abandon. "We ran the test for a few days on our accounts," he said, "decided it wasn't worth the potential drama, and pulled the plug, or so we thought." Users discovered the Bitcoin mining when they noticed their GPUs carrying unusually high loads over the past two weeks. Bitcoins are an electronic currency whose supply is controlled by a massively complex cryptographic equation. Bitcoin mining is the process of attempting to solve it, and it requires a lot of computing power to do so. Stringing together a network of users, witting or unwitting, is a way to do that, similar to the old Folding@home app on the PlayStation 3, used for genetic research. The idea is that when a computer is sitting idle, it gives its GPU over to the application. About an hour after whistleblowers posted in ESEA's forums, Thunberg admitted the problem, blaming a server restart for "a setting getting changed which enables it for all idle users." At first he said fewer than two Bitcoins were mined by the ESEA clients, worth about $280. Further inspection, Thunberg said, discovered that the code had been running for more than two weeks and that about 29 bitcoins had been mined, worth $3,600. "This is way more shady than I originally thought, and as the person who is ultimately responsible for everything it's 100 percent my fault." Thunberg promised that a client update stripped out "all the btc stuff," and "in a blatant attempt to buy back your love," he offered a free one month membership to all users who held premium memberships in April. He also said all of the money made off the mining would go into a tournament prize pool "so at the very least your melted GPUs contributed to a good cause." One user said his card "maintained 90celcius+ for an extended amount of time," and he's getting video errors. He accuses ESEA of frying his video card. But another, in the same thread, said his "560tl 448core was running 93 C for who knows how long," but that it "seems fine for now." Kotaku reached out to Thunberg through an email address associated with his holdings company to ask if he didn't believe user claims of GPU damage caused by the ESEA client. No response was received as of publication. ESEA League has been in existence for about 10 years, supporting games such as Counter-Strike, Team Fortress 2, and League of Legends. Popular competitive gaming league ESEA admins caught installing Bitcoin miners on player's computers without consent, stole $3,602 dollars [Reddit via NeoGAF]

What you're seeing in the video above is the Sourcemod Entertainment System (SMES), a server plugin for Counter-Strike that lets you start up a video game and play another video game inside that video game. According to creator skwumpy, it works like this: you can pick up a cartridge in the game world, insert it in the console (yes, yes, I know, it's a SNES), then pick up a controller and start playing. As a nice touch, everything is animated: the console's switch actually turns on, and the controller's buttons depress. Looks too good to be true, right? Well, it kind of is. That's definitely Super Mario Bros. running on the console in the video above, but it had to be specially programmed for the service. So you can't just boot up any old ROM and expect to play it. Still, just the fact this is running at all seems bananas. Office Video Games - The SMES [YouTube, via Gamefreaks]

Counter-Strike will probably outlive us all. It will also probably keep bunny-hopping onward long after we’ve disposed of all terrorism and achieved glorious grievance-free utopia. There will be no counters or strikes. Only Counter-Strike. So it’s exciting to hear that the implausibly enduring formula’s original creator has decided to revisit it, and the fact that his new game, Tactical Intervention, is actually gonna be playable is pretty neat too. But when? And how? Turns out, the answers are a) this month and b) on the very personal computing device (presumably) sitting before you. The greatest anti-terror weapon of all, however, isn’t guns or drones or bombs disguised to look like good ol’ freshly made American apple pie. It’s knowledge, and you’ll find tons more of it after the break.

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#counterstrike Fun fact: Canada has never appeared in a Counter Strike map before. That is, until Diego Liatis made a map of Montreal's Berri-UQAM station, which you can see above. Pretty cool, right? Well, not everyone feels that way. More »

#farcry More »

“A People’s History” is a three part essay series that argues for a long-standing but suppressed tradition of non-industry involvement in the first person genre. This is part three. [Part one. Part two.](more…)

#army When you're a problem solver like Joe Ricks, nothing stands between you and your dream. For Ricks, the dream was the holy grail of any kid growing up attached to a controller: making video games. So determined was the cash-strapped man, that he risked it all to get the education he needed. Joe Ricks enlisted and went to war so that he could learn how to make video games. More »

Oh hey, it’s Saturday again. Funny how that happens. As per usual, we’ve got another PSN Community Spotlight for you this week. Don’t know what that is? Well, it’s where PlayStation gamers like you tell their unique stories/experiences/thoughts, as submitted to this section in the PlayStation Community Forums. Those that make it all the way to the PlayStation.Blog will find a $50 PlayStation Store voucher in their inbox.

With everybody jumping online to get a taste of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive since its launch last week, we wanted to hear some stories about your experiences with the legendary original iteration of the game. PlayStation gamer MrPatrick16 wrote in to tell us about his first foray into the first person shooter genre with Counter-Strike.

Counter-Strike: Eyes Wide Open

Back in 2007, I went over to a buddy’s house with my PlayStation 2 and Guitar Hero. I was overly excited to be able to play co-op with him, when he told me that he had another game he wanted me to try out. He took me into the garage where they had a PC and handed me a controller. At first I was confused because I had no clue that a PC could even play games. Boy was my mind blown that day! He took the game out of its case, put it in the computer, and opened my eyes to a new genre. I never knew anything outside of side-scrollers, RPGs, music games, action, and racing games. That day, I learned about first person shooters.

The game started up and I was shortly introduced to the title — Counter-Strike. I was told to go to the multiplayer and so I did. The game loaded pretty quickly and the match started up. I selected my weapon and was adjusting to the controls when I was met with a shotgun blast. As the shell exploded into my characters body, I felt a sense of annoyance. It happened time and time again and finally I gave my buddy the controller to show me how it works. He was getting kills pretty easily and I probably looked like a ghost with my mouth opened as I watched him play in sheer amazement. He finished the match and gave me the controller again and I felt ready to go. Luckily, this time I was able to get out of the spawning area and I was off to the races. My team was the counter-terrorists and I was tasked with taking out the terrorists. The level was a warehouse and not too long after playing, I encountered my first enemy. I fired away at him and felt a little pride as I got my first ever kill. Long story short, my team won, but I definitely didn’t help that victory much since I only got a few kills and tons of deaths. Still, I had definitely become hooked.

From that day on that I was over at his house, and we pretty much went straight to that game. There was so much to Counter-Strike that it took a while to finally be able to see everything. There were a lot of guns and servers, man the servers were CRAZY! There were custom servers relating to other games like Metal Gear Solid and a certain Italian plumber we all grew up with. There were even movie based servers, so the game obviously didn’t lack creativity. The modes were plentiful and my favorite was the zombie mode where one person was “the infected” and had to hunt all the other players down with only a knife and a few enhancements. When I was a soldier, I felt afraid and immediately flocked to the best spot to stay away from being infected. When I did become infected, it was a bummer but it was fun trying to get other players. This was an amazingly fun, well-crafted game, and I’m glad I was introduced to it.

When Global Offensive was announced, I felt the rush of those early experiences all over again. I was telling everybody about this game and even got them interested. I have been following it since its announcement and still to this day flock to the Internet for information about it. Counter-Strike opened my eyes to other shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield, and without it, I would’ve never even given those games a chance. The series is an eye opening experience and I will definitely be getting Global Offensive as soon as I can. Counter-Strike is not only a game but, the defining of a genre and everyone should try it out because it might open your eyes too.

See you on the battlefield and as always, game on and stay thirsty my friends.

Thanks for telling your story MrPatrick16. Hopefully you’ve been enjoying your time with Counter Strike: Global Offensive.

Next week, you can tell any story you want as long as it’s about the PlayStation brand. Click here to check out more info on this call to action.

For some, it's just that, another day. Check out this kill montage on the map Office from Counter Strike: Global Offensive! It's Monday evening and the employees are up to no good.

Counter strike global offensive casual classic mode on De Inferno. Whole team dies leaving me against 4 enemies.

Eurogamer’s grand high poobah Tom ‘Tom Bramwell’ Bramwell makes a welcome return to RPS to tell us all about the latest makeover of Valve’s undying multiplayer shooter Counter-Strike, which was was released to the world just yesterday. (more…)

#counterstrike Just in case you weren't put off by the lack of any kind of mention of Valve Software, advance warning of the game's arrival or the complaints demanding their money back, if you see a game called Counter Strike on the App Store, don't spend $2 on it. More »

#counterstrike It's a question proper athletes face all the time. What do you do when you hang up the cleats/boots? Well, if you're Griffin "Flush_Entity" Benger, former pro Counter-Strike player, you make the move from video games to online poker. More »

Despite having originally released all the way back in the year 2,000 Anno Domini, CounterStrike is still – still! – the number one game being played on Steam right now. That’s not even taking into account CounterStrike Source. It’s an astonishing achievement, and CounterStrike ‘s continued popularity is reason enough to pay attention to the new game from it’s co-creator, Minh Le. That new game is Tactical Intervention, and it’s a project he quit his job at Valve to pursue. I sat down for a chat with him, and this is what ensued: (more…)

South Korean developer Nexon this week announced Counter-Strike Online 2, a sequel to its successful made-for-Asian-gaming-cafes port of the original Counter-Strike. Developed under license from Valve, Counter-Strike Online 2 will launch in China, South Korea, Japan and "other areas in Southeast Asia" on a future date.

When it does launch, it'll run on an "enhanced" version of the Source Engine and feature "enhanced graphics, more realistic gameplay and powerful impact sensations," the latter of which troubles us slightly considering the game is primarily about bullets impacting squishy human bodies. We're not in a huge rush to experience that firsthand.

#counterstrike Publishers Nexon and Valve will collaborate to bring the shooter Counter-Strike Online 2 to Asian territories, they said today. More »