Game Groups > Counter-Strike series

Counter-Strike is a series of multiplayer first-person shooters primarily developed by Valve Corporation that focus on competitive battles between teams of terrorists and counter-terrorists. Counter-Strike began as a modification developed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe for Valve's Half-Life. Impressed with the mod, Valve hired Le and Cliffe and turned Counter-Strike into a retail product, which they released as Half-Life: Counter-Strike. It was later made as a standalone game in 2003 on Valve's then-new Steam digital distribution platform, after which it was most commonly known as Counter-Strike 1.6.

In 2004, Valve released Counter-Strike: Condition Zero, a reworked version of the original game with two singleplayer campaigns, and Counter-Strike: Source, a port of the game to Valve's new Source engine. In 2012, Valve released Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, a completely modernized take on the series. Valve continued to support Global Offensive with regular updates and sponsored competitive tournaments until it was replaced by Counter-Strike 2 in 2023.

There have also been several official third-party spinoff titles developed for Asian gaming markets over the years. The first, Counter-Strike Neo, is an arcade game that was released exclusively in Japan by Namco in 2003. Since 2008, Nexon Korea Corporation have released three online instalments in the series: Counter-Strike Online, Counter-Strike Online 2, and Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies.