Counter-Strike is a first-person shooter video game developed by Valve. It was initially developed and released as a Half-Life modification by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe in 1999, before Le and Cliffe were hired and the game's intellectual property acquired. Counter-Strike was released by Valve for Microsoft Windows in 2000. The game is the first installment in the Counter-Strike series. Several remakes and ports have been released on Xbox, as well as OS X and Linux.
The Elo rating system is a method for calculating the relative skill levels of players in zero-sum games such as chess. It is named after its creator Arpad Elo, a Hungarian-American physics professor.
Online skill-based games are online games in which the outcome of the game is determined by the player's physical skill or mental skill. As in off-line games of skill, the definition has legal meaning, as playing games of chance for money is an illegal act in several countries.
Esports is a form of sport competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although organized competitions have long been a part of video game culture, these were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when participation by professional gamers and spectatorship in these events through live streaming saw a large surge in popularity. By the 2010s, esports was a significant factor in the video game industry, with many game developers actively designing and providing funding for tournaments and other events.
Guild Wars is an online role-playing game series developed by ArenaNet and published by NCSOFT. The games were critically well received and won many editor's choice awards, as well as awards such as Best Value, Best Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG), and Best Game. Guild Wars was noted for being the "first major MMO to adopt a business model not based on monthly subscription fees", its instanced approach to gameplay, and the quality of the graphics and play for computers with low specifications. In April 2009, NCSoft announced that 6 million units of games in the Guild Wars series had been sold. The sequel, Guild Wars 2, was announced in March 2007 and released on August 28, 2012. It features updated graphics and gameplay mechanics, and continues the original Guild Wars tradition of no subscription fees. The Guild Wars series had sold 11.5 million copies by August 2015.
Counter-Strike: Source is a first-person shooter video game developed by Valve and Turtle Rock Studios. Released in November 2004 for Windows, it is a remake of Counter-Strike (2000) using the Source game engine. As in the original, Counter-Strike: Source pits a team of counter-terrorists against a team of terrorists in a series of rounds. Each round is won either by completing an objective or by eliminating all members of the enemy team. The game was initially bundled with all retail and digital copies of Half-Life 2, before being released standalone.
A griefer or bad faith player is a player in a multiplayer video game who deliberately irritates and harasses other players within the game (trolling), using aspects of the game in unintended ways. A griefer derives pleasure primarily or exclusively from the act of annoying other users, and as such is a particular nuisance in online gaming communities. To qualify as griefing, a player must be using aspects of the game in unintended ways to annoy other players—if they are trying to gain a strategic advantage, it is instead called "cheating".
Tournament.com was a competitive online gaming service which offered cash prizes. It operated in a limited 12hr beta prior to April 2007 then went to a full 24hr beta test between April 2007 and November 2007. It looked to go fully live during January 2008, before being suspended in November 2007.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a multiplayer first-person shooter developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. Developed for over two years, Global Offensive was released for Windows, macOS, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 in August 2012, and for Linux in 2014. Valve still regularly updates the game, both with smaller balancing patches and larger content additions.
Counter-Strike (CS) is a series of multiplayer first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror while counter-terrorists try to prevent it. The series began on Windows in 1999 with the release of the first game, Counter-Strike. It was initially released as a modification ("mod") for Half-Life that was designed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe before the rights to the mod's intellectual property were acquired by Valve, the developers of Half-Life, who then turned Counter-Strike into a retail product.
Mikail Bill, better known by his in-game name Maikelele, is a Swedish professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player for Digital Chaos. He has also played for qwerty, G2 Esports, Team Kinguin, LGB eSports, Ninjas in Pyjamas, mousesports, UnWanted, ESG!, FaZe Clan, SK Gaming, Team Property and Red Reserve.
Kenny Schrub, better known by his alias kennyS, is a French professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player who most recently played for G2 Esports. He was named "eSports Player of the Year" at The Game Awards 2015. He was considered the best sniper in the game prior to a change to the weapon's mobility, and Duncan Shields, a Counter-Strike analyst, has called him the best player in the game prior to that change. Some of his previous teams include Titan, VeryGames, Team LDLC.com, Recursive eSports, Clan-Mystik, and Team EnVyUs. He was a professional Counter-Strike: Source player before transitioning to Global Offensive in 2012.
In video games, skin gambling is the use of virtual goods, often cosmetic in-game items such as "skins", as virtual currency to bet on the outcome of professional matches or on other games of chance. It is commonly associated with the community surrounding Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but the practice exists in other game communities. Valve, the developer of Global Offensive, also runs the Steam marketplace which can be interfaced by third-parties to enable trading, buying, and selling of skins from players' Steam inventories for real-world or digital currency. Valve condemns the gambling practices as it violates the platform's Terms of Service.
ELeague, shortened as EL, and stylized as ΞLEAGUE is an esports league and American television show that aired on TBS. It was announced in September 2015 as a partnership between Turner Broadcasting and talent agency WME/IMG. The name "ELeague" was officially unveiled later that year.
World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) is an international esports championship tournament based in Shanghai and organized by AliSports. The first edition has a total prize pool of over US$5.5 million . The finals were held in December 2016.
ELEAGUE Season 1 was the inaugural season of the ELEAGUE Counter-Strike: Global Offensive league, running from May 24, 2016 to July 30, 2016. This was the first CS:GO league to be broadcast on cable television in the United States, airing on TBS and streaming online on Twitch. The season featured 24 teams from across the world to compete in a 10-week season, which included a regular season and a playoffs.
Jacky "Stewie2K" Yip, better known as Stewie2K, is an American professional Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player and captain for Team Liquid. He became the first North American to win a Valve–sponsored major in CS:GO.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships, commonly known as the Majors, are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) esports tournaments sponsored by Valve, the game's developer. The first CS:GO Major took place in 2013 in Jönköping, Sweden and was hosted by DreamHack with a total prize pool of US$250,000 split among 16 teams.
Professional Counter-Strike competition involves professional gamers competing in the first-person shooter game series Counter-Strike. The original game, released in 1999, is a mod developed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe of the 1998 video game Half-Life, published by Valve. Currently, the games that have been played competitively include Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ), Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S) and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO). Major championships began in 2001 with the Cyberathlete Professional League Winter Championship, won by Ninjas in Pyjamas.
