Counter-Strike has been a premier series since its inception back in 1999. A staple in the FPS genre, almost every gamer is familiar with Counter-Strike. Today, the most recent installment of the game (CS:GO) boasts a huge player base and its Esports landscape is flourishing. The franchise is so popular that most of its actual maps including Dust, Seige, and Nuke are made by fans.

Related: 10 Games To Play If You Love Counter-Strike

A game with such a rich history is sure to have a lot of trivia that fans might be unaware of. Diving deep into the depths, here are 10 facts that most players won’t know about the Counter-Strike series.

10 It Was Initially A Mod For Half-Life

It’s bizarre to look back and find that Counter-Strike did not start as a stand-alone game. Counter-Strike was initially a mod developed by Minh “Gooseman” Le and Jess “Cliffe” Cliffe for a popular game Half-Life.

After its release, the mod immediately picked up the pace and started to attract a large number of players. Eventually, it became so popular that the rights for the mod were bought by Valve, and the first stand-alone Counter Strike game was developed.

9 There Is An Arcade Version Of Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike Neo, which is developed by gaming giants Namco, is an arcade adaption of the original Counter-Strike Mod. The game was released in 2005 and was only available in Japan.

It was one of the only few games that were dedicatedly made for the Linux operating system. Counter-Strike Neo did not feature the traditional Counter-Terrorist and Terrorist scenarios but had CSF and NEO, which were based on the cyber-space aesthetic of the game.

8 Few Bots Are Named After Real People

The names of some of the bots in the game are indeed based on actual individuals. In hard difficulty, there is a bot name Gabe, which is named after Gabe Newell, the founder of Steam.

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There is also a bot named Dave, who is the creator of popular maps Dust, Dust 2, and Cobble. In expert mode, there are two bots named Minh and Cliff as a tribute to the original developers of the game.

7 Jeff Cliffe Was The Original Voice Artist Behind All The Voice Commands

All the radio commands and dialogue heard in each installment of the game were recorded by co-creator Jeff Cliffe. It wasn’t until the Global Offensive version of the game that each faction got their own unique voice actors.

Most of the voice commands have been replaced by a newer one by now, however, some commands are still untouched, such as “Counter Terrorist Win” or “Terrorist wins.”

6 The In-game Feud That Became Personal

Knife CS:GO

In 2010, A man named Julien Barreaux came into the spotlight after he stabbed and nearly killed another person over an in-game feud. According to reports, Julien lost a knife fight against another player in a Counter-Strike game.

This pushed him over the edge of sanity, and he stabbed the opposing player in real life after tracking him for 6 months. Fortunately, the victim barely survived, and Julien was arrested for the misconduct.

5 Counter-Strike Had Drivable Vehicles At One Point

Since the original Counter-Strike was a mod for Half-Life, it included all the elements of Half-Life. This also meant that the mod had Drivable vehicles just like Half-Life.

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During beta 7.0, the developers officially added the vehicle support to the game where players could drive vehicles in the game. However, the feature was removed in future updates as it was hindering the competitive environment of the game.

4  Valve Has Never Fully Developed A Counter-Strike Game

After the mod was picked up by Valve and turned into a fully-fledged franchise, there hasn’t been a single Counter-Strike game that has been fully developed by Valve. Even though Valve assists in the development, maximum work for it is always outsourced.

This has been the trend since the beginning, and this was again the case for CS:GO, which was developed by Hidden Path Entertainment alongside Valve.

3 The Weapon shown on the CS:GO Logo Is Not Available In The Game

The official logo of CS:GO features a person holding a Scar-L weapon. Interestingly, this weapon never made it into the live version of the game due to unknown reasons.

The Scar-L, or commonly known as Scar-17 during the development phase, was axed from the game, but the logo however was never updated. Valve has never revealed as to why the logo was never updated, and at this point, it’s very unlikely that they do update it.

2 The Name Counter-Strike Was Inspired By A TV Show

On March 15, 1999, the two developers were brainstorming ideas on what to call their new Half-Life mod. Suggested names included Counter Terror, Counter-Terrorism, Strike Force, Frag Heads, Terrorist Wars, Terror Force, Counter Force, and Counter-Strike.

Ultimately, it boiled down to Counter-Strike as it was the best sounding name, and coincidently it was also the name of a Canadian TV show that developer Minh Lee used to watch.

1 Bomb-Defuse Maps Were Not Initially Part Of The Game

In the beginning, Counter-Strike only featured hostage-rescue maps and there were no bomb-defuse maps available in the game. The bomb-defuse maps were added in beta 4.0 and it quickly surpassed the hostage-rescue maps in popularity.

Interestingly, when bomb-defuse maps were initially added, players could plant the bomb anywhere on the map and there weren’t any bomb sites. This was later changed to only two bomb sites per map.

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