After a brief delay, developer Valve has launched the beta for its upcoming Counter-Strike Global Offensive multiplayer shooter. So far beta keys are available only in limited quantities, but there are plenty of players who have gotten some game time and uploaded videos. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is scheduled for release in early 2012 on PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

Minecraft has quickly become one of the most popular independently developed games of all time. If you’re not familiar with the game the art style is completely pixel based and the gameplay revolves around mining blocks and building things with them to protect against foes that appear on night. Sounds a bit simple but with over a million copies sold, the game is no laughing matter.

However, what would happen if you took Minecraft and mashed it up with iconic FPS title Counter-Strike? Well, you’d probably get something as featured in the above video. Sounds pretty amazing and if you were wondering how it was made, its creator Robbazz made a Counter-Strike level to look exactly like a Minecraft scene and cut them together – the results are pretty stunning.

Check it out and let us know what you think.

via kotaku

Valve has run a Counter-Strike Source beta over the past few weeks, and now the game has received the update, which includes achievements, improved engine performance, kill-cam etc. Furthermore, Counter-Strike is now available for Mac as well. Oh, and by the way, it’s on sale on Steam for just $6.80.

Apparently, someone at Valve realized that they operated Counter-Strike as well, in addition to Team Fortress 2 and Left For Dead. Valve has announced that they’ve updated CS Source with new features and new engine updates, and the whole thing is now in a beta for selected users. The new features include:

• 144 achievements added
• New lifetime player stats and summary screens
• New match player stats and summary screens
• New end of round display with MVP and interesting fact about a player
• Updated scoreboard with new icons, visual style, MVP stars, and avatar pictures
• New cinematic death camera
• New domination and revenge system
• Added avatar icons to voice chat, scoreboard, and end of round display
• Incorporated many source engine updates

The last major petition we heard of that was targeted at Valve was the Left 4 Dead 2 boycott. It’s been some time since that petition died down but now another one has emerged, this one a bit less hostile — It’s been over 5 years since Valve released Counter-Strike: Source and we have yet to see a continuation of the series yet, which is what the above mentioned petition focuses on.

This Counter-Strike 2 petition group has already amassed over 25,000 people hoping to get Valve’s attention. Below is their mission statement:

“We want to bolster interest in CS so more people play it, and if we want to regain mainstream attention in the game it needs to be re released as Counterstrike 2. Even if it was just re released with some fixes/patches, additional official maps, a graphical upgrade and a new shiny box …Counterstrike would then survive as a franchise and become popular once again.”

I don’t know about you guys but Counter-Strike was one of the games that really got me hooked on first person shooters. I, for one, fully support the petition.

via destructoid

I don’t know about you guys but the game that really got me into first person shooters was the original Counter-Strike. At the time, there was no Steam so you actually had to go into a store and buy the game. Crazy, I know. Now a days, the game has evolved and Counter-Strike: Source is the latest version. Sure, it may not have exactly the same feel as 1.6 but it is a good game that any diehard FPS fan should check out if they haven’t already.

As a matter of fact, now is the perfect time to check out the game as Valve has just announced that it will be part of this weekends Steam Weekend Deal dropping the price down to just $5.

I mean come on, $5 for such a great game, do you really have any reason not to buy it?

via steam

Of the the original creators of Counter-Strike, Mihn Le, has revealed that he’s working on a new FPS similar to Counter-Strike, called Tactical Intervention, which is build on the Source Engine.

Mihn Le, alongside Jess Cliffe, created Counter-Strike back in 1999, as mod to Half Life. Valve acquired the rights in 2000, and brought them over to Seattle to work on the game. Mihn Le has since worked on his own, and is now working in South Korea with a small team on the new game, which should be out by the end of the year.

It’s no surprise that Germany’s recent banning of games such as World of Warcraft and Counterstrike would cause an uproar in the gaming community — It seems that a group of German gamers have banded together to form a formal protest against the government’s recent decision.

Said group formed a march 400 strong who paraded through Karlsurhe to show their hatred towards the government’s “war on videogames”. But that’s not all, Destructoid reports that 3 more protests are planned to happen simultaneously on July 25th.

Furthermore, there is an online petition that has formed that hopes to reach 5,000 signatures because if it does, officials are required by law to rethink their banning of such games. Will this be enough? Let’s hope so because I mean honestly, how can you ban Counterstrike?

Want to help out? The online petition is located here.

It seems Germany is at it again, this time setting their eyes upon Valve’s extremely popular Counter-Strike series. Legislation was recently passed that now makes it illegal to play Counter-Strike in public.

This has led to the cancelation of Germany’s Convention-X-Treme LAN event which is sure to discourage the mass of German gamers. Furthermore, Destructoid is reporting that World of Warcraft has also been banned from public play.

What’s next, Germany, Halo?

Valve has finally released lifetime retail sales figures for some of its most popular games, including the Half-Life and Counter-Strike series. The sales figures reveal that the studio has sold over 32.8 million copies of their games since their first title back in 1998.

Interestingly, sales from Steam is not included in the below list, so the figure is actually much higher. The following numbers are also sales on only PC, not taking into factor console sales, and were published first in Game Informer and then on Gamasutra.

Here they are:

• Half-Life (Valve) / 1998 – 9.3 Million
• Half-Life: Opposing Force (PC, Gearbox) / 1999 – 1.1 Million
• Half-Life: Blue Shift (PC, Gearbox) / 2001 – 800,000
• Counter-Strike (PC, Valve) / 2000 – 4.2 Million
• Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (PC, Valve) / 2004 – 2.9 Million
• Counter Strike: Source (PC, Valve) / 2006 – 2.1 Million
• Counter-Strike (Xbox, Valve) / 2003 – 1.5 Million
• Half-Life 2 (Valve) / 2004 – 6.5 Million
• Half-Life 2: Episode One (PC, Valve) / 2006 – 1.4 Million
• The Orange Box (Valve) / 2007 – 3 Million