Ever heard of the butterfly knife in CS: GO? Or the Dragon Lore skin for AWP? If you are an avid player you would instantly recognize these names. Today, the game has evolved from just a team vs team match hooked with a long LAN cable in the college dorm to a global event. Teams rank themselves across the world and spend thousands of dollars every year to compete for the most coveted tournaments. Counter-Strike, today, has become a religion. Much like DOTA, Age of Empires, Warcraft, PUBG, and all, it is a global affair to be a top-ranked player. There is real money in it.
A Brief History
This is the best reason one can put forth, for its popularity in 2020, after 8 years post its release. The first release of Counter-Strike Global Offensive was made in August of 2012. It was available for all platforms like Windows, Xbox, Classic Mac OS, and even Linux distributions. Primarily this was a go-to game for college kids and Linux was important too. From the house of Valve Corporation and Hidden Path Entertainment, designers Minh Le and Jess Cliffe took a turn to the wild side and came up with this game.
Today, when you do a Google Search for CS: GO, you also get a list of the world-famous CS: GO, players, as if they were some celebrity or inventors. As if they were some great personalities and this is more than enough to explain why the game is still popular in 2020.
The Video Game Series
The popularity of CS: GO can be attributed to the popularity of the entire video game series, and the fan following. The time when this game was out for the youngsters, there were little alternatives in this field. As an FPS game, it not only offered the best LAN gaming, but you could form teams online and have matches. The multi-player setup was best realized and brought to the world with Counter-Strike 2.0. Popularly known as just Counter-Strike, this game was the best. The first release was in November of 2000, 20 years ago.
Counter-Strike is a series that is not just this game that we know today; it is a series of video games. The developers at Valve took the help of a lot of contributors like Nexon and publishers to propel this game forward. It is a first-person shooter game where teams of terrorists battle to penetrate a compound and counter-terrorists try to stop them. The idea is simple and effective, and to this day stays the same. Nothing can beat a good old recipe for saving humanity from evil. Whether it was Olympus Has Fallen by Gerad Butler or Battle Los Angeles, the story is the same, and it works out every time. Thus, the game was a huge success and broke every record that was ever made.
You can watch several videos online, on YouTube on the evolution of Counter-Strike from 1999 to 2018, and you would notice not much of a difference.
- Valve, Sierra Entertainment, Hidden Path, Turtle Rock Studios are some of the world-famous names associated with this franchise.
- Some other franchises in this field include Call of Duty, battlefield, but nothing quite stood toe to toe with this game. It was simple and effective and is still the same today.
- With the modern release and era of customizations and personalization, CS: GO came with a wonderful opportunity to keep the game alive. This was called CS: GO skins.
- Today, the Steam Community is doing great with players winning real money with these skins like the skins for the butterfly knife in CS: GO. You can go online and find third-party sites that sell these skins. There is the Vanilla Knife that sells for around $700 while a StatTrak rate shows a $100 higher price. The Doppler variant of the butterfly knife in CS:GO is selling at $1100.
- A butterfly knife in CS: GO has dozens of skins including Crimson Web, Damascus Steel, Rust Coat, Fade, Slaughter, Night, Blue Steel, Case Hardened, Urban Masked, Boreal Forest, Stained, Forest DDPAT, and many more
Growing Popularity
In short, the popularity of this game did not happen overnight but evolved over a span of two decades. This leads to a fan following in millions and that has kept the game from dying. On top of that, there is growing community empowerment that aims to keep this game alive and well even if the developers stopped supporting it in the near future. In short, it is future proof.
Here are the top reasons why the game is still unbeatable in 2020.
- The game is simple and straightforward where the battle of good vs evil is showcased in all its glory. You are a counter-terrorist and you have to defend a compound from the terrorists.
- The gameplay is much deeper and thoughtful that it looks and seems from the above statement. One cannot expect such a commitment unless they play the game. It needs teamwork and effort.
- The power of eSports and tournaments has propelled the game a lot. It has kept the momentum going, teams competing, new players learning the game, and all. The sponsors are still around and happy with the franchise.
- Social experience has evolved a lot in these years. From the advent of the first internet gadgets and the rise of 3G networks in the early 2000s, there is everything online today. Smartphones are the best gaming devices. And, even if you don’t want to spend 100s of dollars on skins or gaming laptops, you are still able to play CS: GO.
- The game was and still is free to play. Nothing can beat a solid gaming experience that comes at no cost. Regular updates and patches have kept the game young and alive, lag-free, modern, and compatible with changing times.
- Mainly maps, mods, skins, and new challenges have allowed players to witness the same thrill they experience when they first set foot on the game arena. It is still lively and full of entertainment.
Counter-Strike has a huge community of gamers and developers for whom there is respect and nostalgia for the franchise. And, it is not going to go away anytime soon.
HussaiN is a full-time professional blogger from India. He is passionate about content writing, tech enthusiasts, and computer technologies. Apart from content writing on the internet, he likes reading various tech magazines and several other blogs on the internet. Email ID: [email protected]
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