Counter Strike Global Offensive
GameUtha April 26, 2022
First Person Shooter Counter Strike Global Offensive
Counter Strike Global Offensive is one of the most popular first-person shooter games on the market right now. Developed and published by Valve, the game first Appeared in 2000. The series went on to spawn several sequels with the most popular and recent being Counterstrike: Global Offensive or more commonly known as CSGO.
CSGO averages around 900,000 players on steam everyday and draws in around 11 million players every month. The game was made free to play in 2018 by valve which allowed its popularity to flourish. CSGO is an objective based game where two opposing teams, namely the Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists compete to complete objectives which includes defusing bombs and securing locations. CSGO currently has 9 game modes includes Arms Race, Demolition, Deathmatch and Casual. There are five categories for weapons; rifles, submachine guns, heavy weapons, pistols and grenades. Since its release valve has continued to update the game with new maps, modes, weapon skins and more.
The Competitive/Esports Scene
CSGO has a major presence in the competitive and Esports scene. In fact, the game revitalized Counterstrikes competitive scene as it ushered in a new era for the franchise. The first major event took place in 2013, it was a community funded event that had a $250,000 prize pool. Tt took place in Sweden and over the years has become one of the most prestigious events for the game.
The competitive scene blew up so much that all major teams formed a union putting forth several demands before Valve which included a floor for the prize pool which was to be no less than 75,000 for any major event. There is almost always an event taking place whether it’s sponsored by ESL or any other entity. PGL Major Antwerp will wrap on the 24th of April while Pinnacle Cup IV is set to begin on the 25th in Europe with a prize pool of $100,000. Other upcoming events include ESL Challenger League North America with a prize pool of $50,000 as well as the European version of this event starting the very same day.
Controversies and Setbacks
Having been available on the market for nearly 10 years the game has faced its fair share of setbacks and controversies. The first of which was caused by the introduction of the games in game economy. Since players are able to make their own skins, they started selling them for exorbitant prices, leading to the creation of gambling sites.
Valve has also made several changes that did not go down well with fans. In 2016, the map inferno was removed from the competitive pool. Earlier, in 2015 players armed with the AWP weapons had their movements and speed decreased while using the weapon.
Cheating is a major issue that has persisted ever since the game’s release. Many players, including professional players have been banned using Valve’s anti cheat system known as Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC). In 2020 the Esports Integrity Commission banned over 37 coaches were banned due to the abuse of a spectator mode bug which allowed them to see parts of the map they would not usually have access to and allowed them to gather information about the enemy team. The ability for coaches and players to converse was also removed.
The Future
Many first-person competitive shooters have entered the market ever since CSGO’s release and none have been really able to challenge or impact CSGO’s player base and loyalty. However, Valorant has caused some shakeup. Valorant is a first-person hero shooter released by Riot Games in 2020. When the game released many players moved on to it, abandoning CSGO. Both Europe and North America started losing players. But the players leaving the game weren’t really the top players, most tier 1 players have continued to play CSGO, most players that did leave were ones that were struggling to remain at the top of their game like ScreaM and Ex6TenZ.
Valve also took notice of the rising popularity of Valorant and started making several changes to the game that were long requested by the community. New content was added, problems with the meta were fixed and generally Valve looked to be a lot more involved with the game a similar trend was observed with Fortnite and Apex Legends. When the latter released Epic Games started adding small quality of life changes that were over due and even gave away the battle pass for free during Fortnite’s season 8 update.
With CSGO still pulling in record numbers it’s hard to say whether Valorant or any other game will ever truly cause the game to drop in popularity. What is does confirm however, is that Valve is very aware of the threats that could cause players to migrate to other games and as such it will do everything in its power to keep the game enjoyable and updated for a long time to come. In order to retain its player base Valve should continue to update the game and be more involved with the community by listening to feedback, implementing changes and fixes and also adding new content.
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