Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a first-person shooter video game which is a part of the Counter-Strike series. It was announced to the public on August 12, 2011, and is developed by Valve Corporation and their partner, Hidden Path Entertainment. The game was later released on August 21, 2012 for the Playstation 3, Xbox 360, Microsoft Windows, and OS X and later Linux as a downloadable title.
Game modes – Currently, Global Offensive features five game modes for online play:
- Classic Casual and Competitive: Counter-Strike ’s most well-known game mode, both involving Bomb Scenario and Hostage Scenario missions. At the start of each round, players can purchase weapons and gear with money earned from various actions, from assisting on kills to completing objectives. Regardless of mission type, a round ends when one team completes an objective, eliminates the other team, or lets the timer run out. If the timer runs out before one of these objectives are completed, the team which did not need to complete an objective wins.
- Bomb Scenario: the Terrorists must plant a C4 explosive at one of two designated bombsites and protect it until its countdown finishes and detonates; the Counter-Terrorists must prevent the bomb from exploding, either ensuring that the terrorist team does not plant it or defusing it once it is planted.
- Hostage Scenario: the Counter-Terrorists must rescue hostages from the Terrorists, and bring them to an extraction point; the Terrorists must prevent the hostages from escaping. If a Terrorist or Counter-Terrorist attempts to kill hostage, they will suffer a heavy cash penalty. An update later changed how Counter-Terrorists rescue hostages: instead of leading them around, players must carry one hostage at a time to the extraction point.
- Arms Race: a deathmatch-based mode where each player is rewarded for each kill with a new weapon, with the first player to get a kill with every weapon in a predetermined set winning the game.
- Demolition: a round-based mode that removes weapon and equipment purchasing, instead rewarding players who manage at least one kill by giving the next weapon in a predetermined set of weapons. After a second kill with that weapon the players are also rewarded a grenade along with their new weapon for the next round.
- Deathmatch (added on November 12, 2012): a mode consisting of 10-minute matches. Players must gain the highest possible score by earning kills with different weapons or desired weapons. The number of points from a kill depend on the weapon. Players may also take advantage of bonus timers for different weapons, using them to score extra points. Like in Arms Race, players automatically respawn after getting killed, but also when they choose to respawn with bonus weapons.
- Global Offensive also offers two offline modes: Offline with Bots, which offers the same game modes with AI-controlled bots; and a Weapons Course, a single player map serving as a tutorial and a training mode.
Global Offensive supports matchmaking and leaderboards for all online game modes, provided by Steam. The provided online service offers the ability to filter by game modes, maps and a built-in Steam friend system. Valve also employs Valve Anti-Cheat, which can automatically remove and ban players from the Valve online network. To match players of similar skill levels for an enjoyable experience, the game uses a heavily modified version of Elo rating system. The PC version of Global Offensive also supports private dedicated servers that the player may connect to through the community server menu in-game. These servers may be heavily modified and can be completely different from the base game.[:]