Originally developed by Gooseman (Minh Le), cliffe (Jess Cliffe), and a few other online friends, the famed Valve software now maintains Counter-Strike while Gearbox Software works on CS: Condition Zero and Gooseman works on Counter-Strike 2. (Click here for the full Counter-Strike team.)

Currently there are three modes of play in CS: assassination, hostage and defusion.

In defusion the terrorists must plant a C4 bomb, and the counter-terrorists must disarm the bomb. This mode is based around one or more bomb points on each map and has some less death-matchy components, it requires a large amount of teamwork to pull off your objective, on either side. Once the bomb goes off Terrorists win, when CTs kill all terrorists and disarm any active bombs CTs when. It is very possible for a dead Terrorist team to win.

In hostage maps Terrorists must defend hostages, whilst the CTs try to rescue them. Once all the hostages are rescued the CTs win, if either team dies off the opposite team wins.

In assassination mode, one CT plays as a VIP which other CTs must protect from attacking terrorists, and get to a certain point.

Counter-Strike sports a ton of weapons including the MP5-Navy, Colt M4A1, SIG P228, the SIG Commando, and much more. Some weapons are team specific, like the AK-47 for terrorists, and the M4A1 with the Counter-Terrorists. Also CS feature multiple equipment. Also CS has many different versions, many are beta, or test, versions, but CS has entered the 1.x stage. For map information go to our maps page.

If you haven't picked up the free CS mod yet, get it here! Remember, you must have the latest version of Half-life retail installed. If you don't have Half-Life, you can purchase Half-Life: Counter-Strike from any online here.

On April 12th, 2000 Valve announced a partnership with CS:

Counter-Strike Team Partners With Valve Version 1.0 to be included in Half-Life update
Kirkland, WA (April 12, 2000)

The Counter-Strike development team and Valve today announced Valve's support for on-going development of Counter-Strike, the popular multiplayer modification (MOD) for Valve's awarding winning debut title Half-Life.

"The financial and technical support from Valve is a big help in continuing to evolve Counter-Strike. It lets us focus on making Counter-Strike a better game and respond to gamers requests for features and fine-tuning," said Minh Le, Project Leader of Counter-Strike development. "Distributing Counter-Strike 1.0 as a free upgrade to the two million Half-Life players will grow the Counter-Strike community enormously." "We made a major investment in the MOD community early on with activities like the MOD Expo and the release of tools and source code," said Gabe Newell, Managing Director of Valve. "With Half-Life still a top seller at retail, and generating over 350 million player-minutes per month on the Internet, a lot of the credit for that goes to the MOD community's support of Half-Life. Working with Minh and Cliffe is one way of showing our on-going commitment to them and all the gamers that make Half-Life the most popular game on the Internet."

Here's the of the Half-Life: Counter-Strike box art (click here to purchase for a low price).

It has been confirmed that Counter-Strike 2 is now being worked on by Gooseman. It will use the TF2/HL2 engine. It will, of course, be either a modification or a full retail product.