A Brief History Of CS
Any online gamer worth their salt with know what Half Life and Counterstrike is. Not just the old engine, but the new source engine. Its turned into just about a household name for clan hosts like Quake and Doom were in the 1990’s.
CSS in the dawn of online gaming
Counter Strike rolled off the development line way back in June 1999 as a mod to Half Life. But was not until November 2000 that Valve retailed the game. Gamers sat through 19 beta releases before being able to play the first full version of the game. Despite that there was also 7 major updates, one of the biggest and most talked about with the update from 1.5 to 1.6.
Introducing STEAM servers
Many people believed that this update ruined the game as 1.6 was only released on Steam. After the WON platform was shutdown in 2004, there is still a group of hard-core players still playing 1.5. But these mainly consist of people who are too cheap to buy a genuine copy of the game. 1.6 allowed modders to add maps, sounds etc. Still now, there is a large group developing maps and mods for Counterstrike game servers. This proves just how big Counterstrike Source gaming hosting still remains.
Counterstrike Conditions Zero servers were released shortly after in 2004. The game was essentially a facelift that allowed you to run bots single player. This was based on a modification of the Quake II engine and did not have the success that was expected with only 2.9 million retail sales of the game as of December 2008, in comparison to 4.2 million copies in the same time.
Source server engine is introduced
In 2004 Valve released Half Life 2, this also saw the release of Counterstrike Source, or CSS for short. The new release introduced cutting edge graphics. Half Life Episode One, also brought a new release to the Source Engine in 2006. It took a while for people to get into CSS, as a high powered PC was needed. However, once you play CS Source, you dont stop. Like 1.6, CSS maintained the ability to change the game content with mods and maps etc.
Hax, cheaters and Counterstike Servers
All three versions of Counter Strike have been plagued with issues of cheaters and hackers on CSS game servers. VAC is a popular deterrant, although its not foolproof. Which is why you find organisations such as Steam Bans that work on submissions from game server admins. By far the best deterrent has to be a good server admin on the clan server itself. One problem though is having admins on the servers 24/7. Which is why we have recently seen a lot of scripts that automatically kick and ban hackers.
As we write this, we arent quite sure on the history of Counterstrike. The market is becoming increasingly competitive with the likes of EAs Battlefield series of games and Activision with the Call of Duty games.
We will have to wait and see what Valve do!
