Valve games have become more and more dependent on the Steam Workshop for introducing new content and fuelling play. That’s never more the case than in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, which is as much about unlocking, buying and trading gun skins as it is familiar CT vs. T battles. So it’s interesting to see how Valve deal with copyright infringement within that community. After receiving a DMCA takedown notice about two items, the M4A4 | Howl and a community sticker named Howling Dawn, those items have been swiftly removed from the store and action taken against its creators.

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One problem with using Let’s Plays and livestreams to fill video game-shaped longings in my life when I can’t summon the will to actually play one myself–and there may be several problems with this–is that so many are terrible. While good players or good performers can be genuinely entertaining, if they’re not I can’t pretend I’m not trying to fill a gaping emotional hole with ‘content’ and human voices. So huzzah! Twitch is tapping its Steam connection to use magical metadata so viewers can find the good stuff, starting with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

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I used to review Counter-Strike maps as a teenager, for free, for fun, for fansites. If you’d have told me then that thirteen years later, I’d still be writing about them for fun, but as a career, I’d have said, “Well, obviously.” What else was I ever going to do?

Global Offensive’s new Operation Phoenix pack (or, “Pho3nix”, but I’d rather not) let’s you play eight top-voted community maps through the game’s competitive mode. … [visit site to read more]

Counter-Strike is a lot like high school. There are a lot of cliques. Fights break out in the hallways. Everybody is concerned with looking cool. And now, with Global Offensive’s latest update, people are able to decorate the covers of their books (guns) with stickers.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive now has stickers. This is a good thing. This is a very good thing. … [visit site to read more]

Let’s imagine that my time here at RPS thus far can be split into The Wire-style themed television seasons. The first season was all about FIFA and Football Manager and foot-to-ball related things. This second season is all about Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. It’s not my fault; I just find it really interesting.

The latest post on the official CS: GO blog details how Valve record data about each new map they add to the game, comparing new additions Cobblestone and Overpass with other official maps. (more…)

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive‘s Steam Workshop is full of custom-made maps for the veteran multiplayer shooter, but under normal circumstances those maps can only be played on certain, custom servers. Operation Bravo takes eight of those community maps and makes them playable on official, ranked matchmaking servers in Casual, Deathmatch and Competitive game modes. For $6/ 3.50.

The event was set to end this past Monday, but Valve have extended it til February 5th. Because, as the CS: GO blog explains, it’s proven so popular. (more…)

It seems like only yesterday that I was writing about development of new maps for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Which is fair but slightly inaccurate, as it was actually Tuesday that I wrote about that. Now the maps are available to play as part of CS:GO’s Winter Offensive update, alongside the first batch of community-made weapon skins to be added into the game. (more…)

Dave Johnston is best known for creating de_dust and de_dust 2, but he also made other maps for Counter-Strike. No, I’m not talking about cs_tire, the reddish-brown retirement home which was cut from an early beta. (That’s me establishing my CS credentials). I mean de_cbble, the quaint castle-set map.

Over on the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive blog, the CS:GO team have written about their work in re-creating and updating de_cbble for the new game, alongside an entirely new map they’re adding soon. They say mean things about the old de_cbble. (more…)

I have sniped a Terrorist across the full length of A-Long. I’ve hidden behind the squeaky door on Nuke, unmoving, for almost two minutes before scoring an ace with a P90. I’ve won and lost last-minute nailbiters. But until the most recent Dreamhack tournament I’d never staked an AK-47 on a match before and I’d never really got under the surface of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

Hit the jump to commit to a competitive game

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Counter-Strike is one of My Games. One of those games that made me. One of those games that caused me to run up a huge phone bill when 56k modems were a thing. One of those games where I can still close my eyes and get a little jolt from imagining the rattling fire of an unsilenced M4A1.

In the weirdest way considering that it’s the 4th, 6th and 9th most popular games on Steam, it’s only recently begun to feel like one of Valve’s> games. They’re now honouring the M4A1 fetishism of the game’s tens of thousands of players by adding player-created Weapon Finishes. (more…)