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One of the most iconic esports titles, Counter-Strike series was first developed in 1999. It was first released as a modification for Valve’s Half-Life game, which is a futuristic science fiction-based first person shooter, released in 1998.
In this article, we will discuss the origins of the Counter-Strike franchise, talk about the initial beta version of the famed FPS, the esports scene, the transition to CS: GO, and look through the newly released statistical information featuring the best players and best teams in the world.
Origins
The initial Half-Life game had strong singleplayer mode and an incredible storyline, which many players really enjoyed. The title also featured innovative gameplay, and some fast-paced multiplayer action in the included deathmatch mode on maps such as Crossfire, which eventually became classic.
The engine’s aspects and the built-in ability to intensively modify the gameplay and the in-game assets, according to the developer needs, enabled the ability to develop a drastically different multiplayer modification, which ended up being quite successful.
Beta
The initial version of Counter Strike was made available to the public by the developers Jess “Cliffe” Cliffe and Minh “Gooseman” Leon on June 19, 1999, when the first beta version was officially released by the US-based enthusiasts. This date marks the official birthday of the CS franchise.
The developers then started working for Valve, and the initial release version of the game became available on November 8, 2000. Notable versions of the title also included patches 1.3 and 1.4, which became available in September 2001 and April 2002, respectively.
The first iteration of the Counter-Strike franchise is commonly referred to as simply CS 1.6. The famous 1.6 beta version of the patch was ready in January 2003, and the final 1.6 version of the game, which many people in the world know and love, came out later in September.
Esports scene
The various esports events in the title have been hosted literally since the beta version came out. Since then, the CS esports scene has been active for more than 20 years.
Notable mentions of the first big CS tournaments include the legendary CPL series of events, which stand for Cyberathlete Professional League, and also other elite championships such as World Cyber Games series, or WCG, Electronic Sports World Cup, or ESWC, and also DreamHack series.
Intel, in collaboration with the ESL, started regularly hosting the IEM series of events, known as the Intel Extreme Masters championships.
The official sequel of the game, titled Counter-Strike:Source, came out in November 2004.
The bigger part of the community of the players were certain that the game was worse than its predecessor in terms of skill ceiling, because of the design flaws of the title, coupled with the new Source engine’s peculiarities.
In the result, the competitive scene was divided into two parts with the release of the newer Valve’s title, but the majority of the players were still holding strong to the CS 1.6 version.
CS: GO release
The release of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive title by Valve in 2012 marks the new page in the history of the Counter-Strike franchise.
The CS: GO title, as we have it today, has gone through some multiple large-scale transformations, including all sorts of patches from the North American developer. These were the moves which ensured the right balancing and the refinement of the competitive title’s gameplay.
For the competitive FPS gamers, both CS 1.6 and CS: GO are obviously great games. They feature pretty much similar gameplay and mechanics, with some minor changes.
The newer game has more modern graphical representation and some nice quality-of-life upgrades, but some old-school players still prefer the older version instead of the newer title.
Valve literally killed the CS 1.6 competitive scene in 2012 by forcing esports professionals to switch to the newer Global Offensive version.
One can flame and speculate about this awkward situation pretty much forever. The same choices were made by the other big names in the industry, such as Blizzard Entertainment and their StarCraft franchise.
What can be said for sure, is that there is a long lasting legacy and history of competitive CS 1.6 gaming. And recently, one of the main esports media on the web, which specializes exclusively on Counter-Strike continent, had something to say about this matter.
CS 1.6 stats
HLTV.org is one of the biggest and most authoritative esports media on the web. Throughout the years, the online portal, which is the home for many Counter-Strike fans, covered exclusively the CS franchise.
The website recently posted an interesting update on its pages. The statistical section of the HLTV.org’s webpage now features a small, but a very welcomed addition.
The stats page now contains a link to a newer site’s page, which is located on the left part of the screen. It is titled as the 1.6 stats section, or else, it is called legacystats.
This means that the newly released section features convenient access to a huge CS 1.6 statistics database, with lots of information regarding top 1.6 professional players, top 1.6 teams, etc.
It even features a pie chart of the game’s top weapons, and also showcases map distribution peculiarities in all of the recorded professional matches.
On the website, which was recently purchased for €35 million by Better Collective group, the site’s users can now observe some of the in-depth statistical data, throughout the period from the CS 1.6 release in 2004, up until the end of the era of the professional CS 1.6 tournaments in 2013.
Best players in the world
First on the list, the statistics page features the top players rating, consisting of one of the best players in the history of competitive Counter-Strike.
cogu
The first place of the CS 1.6 top players section features Brazilian CS superstar AWPer Raphael “cogu” Camargo. He is the top player on the list, with a 1.26 rating on 98 maps. Camargo can now be officially crowned as the best player in the history of competitive CS 1.6.
The 36-year-old has been active on the CS competitive scene since the early 2000s. cogu mainly played the sniper role for the Brazilian powerhouse mibr.
The Brazilian CS team famously won ESWC 2006, the major $160,000 prize pool tournament, against the likes of Swedish roster of Fnatic, with the 16:6 score in the finals. Camargo won multiple championships, including IEM, CPL, GameGune, and WCG events.
GeT_RiGhT
The next player on the list of the best players in the world, is the Swedish godlike rifler and incredibly talented lurker — Christopher “GeT_RiGhT” Alesund. The legendary Swede managed to retain a high 1.25 rating throughout the 662 maps of competitive play, which is pretty amazing, considering the much bigger number of the games.
During the CS 1.6 times, GeT_RiGhT famously played for multiple organizations, including notable names, such as Begrip Gaming, Ninjas in Pyjamas, SK Gaming, a German organization, which was signing mostly Swedish rosters, also Meet Your Makers, Giants Gaming, and Fnatic.
Alesund is considered one of the best players who ever touched the game. He was the second best in the world by HLTV ratings in 2010 and 2011. Then, after the CS: GO transition, and the era of total NiP team domination, he became first on the list in the 2013 and 2014 season.
FalleN
Third on the list is Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo. The iconic Brazilian AWPer is not too far away from the first two players, as he has one of the biggest fan bases all over the world and is especially popular in his native South American region.
The 30-year-old can boast a 1.24 rating on 105 maps. During the 1.6 era, FalleN played for notable organizations such as FireGamers and compLexity Gaming. He was nominated as the best Brazilian player in his role throughout the period of 2009-2011.
Even though Toledo is high on the list of 1.6 players, most of the international esports fans recognize him for his performances throughout the later part of his professional career, which happened in CS: GO, when he was ranked the second best player in the world in 2016.
NiKo
The next player on the list is Nikola Kovac, known in the esports community as NiKo. Easily one of the best players in the world, the player originating from Bosnia and Herzegovina managed to score a 1.24 rating on 97 maps.
NiKo played competitively since 2009. He is best known for his strong performances on various big CS: GO teams, when he was picked up first by mousesports, then FaZe Clan, and later, G2 Esports.
In the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive era Kovac achieved much more success than in 1.6. He was rated as the second and third best player in the world throughout 2017-2018, and was named as the MVP of multiple StarLadder, ESL, BLAST, and IEM series of competitive events.
NEO
Completing the top five list of the best CS 1.6 players, with any recorded amounts of maps played, is the polish giant Filip “NEO” Kubski. During the 1.6 era, Kubski was widely considered as one of the best players in the world. He has 636 maps with the 1.24 rating.
The 34-year-old is famously known as the member of the Golden Five squad, who were mostly known in the CS scene as Team Pentagram and Meet Your Makers polish CS squads.
The polish superteam managed to rock the world by scoring seven first places at various world championships during their domination on the CS scene in 2006-2008, finishing first at WCG, ESWC, DreamHack, and IEM series of events.
f0rest
Taking in consideration the amount of maps played, the 500 maps club consists of players such as the abovementioned GeT_RiGhT, NEO, and the other top3 player in the list is Patrik “f0rest” Lindberg.
f0rest’s teammate, GeT_RiGhT, has already retired in January 2021. Lindberg is a unique player in this regard. He is still performing on the competitive scene at a very high level.
Lindberg is mostly known for playing in teams, such as Begrip, Fnatic, and SK Gaming. He then continued his successful career and transitioned to CS: GO in 2012, where he played for Ninjas in Pyjamas and Team Dignitas.
f0rest can be easily considered as one of the best players in the history of Counter-Strike. He started his competitive esports career in Valve’s esports title at the beginning of 2000s.
He managed to finish first at WEG, SEC, NGL, CPL, WEM, IEM, KODE5, ESWC, WCG, GameGune, and other series of multiple esports events.
Edward
Notable appearances in the list of top players from the CIS region includes two former Na’Vi players. The first player is the Ukrainian CS team‘s rifler and a “pistol king”, known as Ioann “Edward” Sukhariev.
Edward earned his alternate nickname in the CS community for his incredible pistol ace highlight against the f0rest’s Fnatic team during the Arbalet Cup Europe event in 2010.
Sukhariev also comes very close to f0rest in the actual stats, with a 1.20 rating, but he has significantly lesser amount of played maps recorded — 555 versus 733.
Edward managed to earn around $700,000 during his professional career in esports. Ioann started competing in 2004 and during the CS 1.6 days, before joining Natus Vincere, he played for teams such as pro100, Virtus.pro, DTS Gaming, and HellRaisers.
markeloff
Nearing the other players on the list is Edward’s teammate, the legendary AWPer, Egor “markeloff” Markelov. He was voted as the best CS player in the world in 2010.
This was also the extraordinary year when Na’Vi famously won four world championships in a row — IEM’s Intel Extreme Masters IV, ESWC 2010, World Cyber Games 2010, and DreamHack Winter 2010.
Markelov started competing on the highest level in the late 2000s. Egor played for various teams, such as, Amazing Gaming, DTS Gaming, and HellRaisers, before eventually joining Natus Vincere team and becoming one of the best players in the Counter-Strike’s history.
Best teams
The teams rating states that the Ukrainian Na’VI squad from the CS 1.6 era is officially the best team in the world, with the 1.12 rating on the 471 recorded maps.
Team Fnatic came close second. The Swedish organization achieved a 1.12 rating in an even bigger number of official matches — 727 maps.
Next best CS teams on the list are Polish Frag eXecutors and SK Gaming. Both teams have the 1.11 rating and 409 maps, and 1.10 rating and 669 maps, respectively.
Finally, the Danish-German mTw and mousesports conclude the list of top teams with a respectable amount of recorded maps. Both squads achieved 1.10 rating, with 484 and 434 maps, respectively.
Weapons
The most used weapon in the game was the Terrorist’s rifle, ak47, with a 37% usage ratio. CT’s m4a1 device comes close with 29%. CT’s default pistol, usp, was used in 8% of the cases.
The value of frags with other popular weapons, such as famas, deagle, glock18, and even high explosive grenades, ranges from 4.5 to 2.8%. All other weapons, including such as awp, according to the displayed charts, were used in nearly 4.4% of the cases.
Maps
Most of the competitive games in Counter-Strike were played on de_inferno map. Other popular bomb defusal scenarios, such as Nuke, Dust2, and Train come close, and are pretty much equal in their played amount.
Tuscan and Mirage, as the quite interesting and well designed alternative maps, which were frequently used for the recorded competitive matches, according to the statistical data, were picked in a much lesser amount of times, when compared to the other entries on the list.