All Counter-Strike Games in Order: The Complete Chronological List

Counter-Strike is one of the few games that has never really gone away. It began in 1999 as a free mod for Half-Life, became a retail product the following year, launched alongside Steam in 2003, and today, as Counter-Strike 2, it is the most played game on Valve's platform with more than a million people online at peak every single day.

Along the way there have been more Counter-Strike games than most people realise: console ports, a Japanese arcade cabinet, two free-to-play spin-offs built for Asian markets, a zombie game, and a full engine remake. This guide lists every Counter-Strike game in release order, explains what made each one different, and finishes with a practical answer to the question we get asked most: which version is worth playing, and hosting, in 2026.

Every Counter-Strike Game in Order

Twelve releases carry the Counter-Strike name. Five are mainline games, one is a console port, and the rest are regional or spin-off titles. Here they are in chronological order.

1999–2004: The GoldSrc Era

The first five years of Counter-Strike all ran on GoldSrc, the heavily modified Quake engine that powered Half-Life. This is the period that defined the game's rules, its maps, and its economy, and much of it is still being played on community servers today.

1. Counter-Strike (Half-Life mod) – June 1999

Counter-Strike started as a hobby project by Minh "Gooseman" Le, a Canadian student who had already built the Action Quake 2 mod, and Jess "Cliffe" Cliffe, who ran the community side. The first public beta arrived on June 19, 1999, with a handful of maps and the two objectives that still define the game: plant or defuse the bomb, and rescue or guard the hostages.

What set it apart from the deathmatch shooters of the time was the round structure. Players had one life per round, earned money for kills and objectives, and had to spend it wisely at the start of the next round. That buy-phase economy turned a mod into a team sport, and the beta iterations through 1999 and 2000 added the maps that would become permanent fixtures, including de_dust, cs_assault, and de_aztec.

2. Counter-Strike 1.0 (Retail) – November 2000

Valve saw what was happening and hired both creators in 2000, acquiring the rights to the mod in the process. Counter-Strike 1.0 shipped as a boxed retail product on November 8, 2000, published by Sierra, and it no longer required Half-Life to run. This is the version that locked in the weapon roster most players still recognise: the AK-47, M4A1, AWP, Desert Eagle, and the rest.

The retail release also marked the moment Counter-Strike became a competitive discipline. The Cyberathlete Professional League ran its first Counter-Strike events in 2001, and by 2002 the game was the centrepiece of LAN tournaments across Europe, North America, and Asia. Versions 1.1 through 1.5 followed over the next two years, each refining hitboxes, recoil, and netcode.

3. Counter-Strike 1.6 – September 2003

Counter-Strike 1.6 launched on September 15, 2003, three days after Steam itself. Valve used the update to move the game onto its new distribution platform, and the enforced migration is a big part of why Steam survived its rocky early years. Beyond the platform shift, 1.6 added the riot shield, the Galil and FAMAS, and a reworked user interface.

For many players 1.6 remains the definitive Counter-Strike. It anchored the professional scene from 2003 until 2012, and its community server culture, from deathmatch and GunGame to surf, zombie mod, and jailbreak, invented most of the custom modes that later games inherited. More than twenty years on there are still thousands of 1.6 servers online, and it is still one of the most requested titles on our platform.

4. Counter-Strike (Xbox) – November 2003

Two months after 1.6, Counter-Strike arrived on the original Xbox. Ritual Entertainment handled the port, adapting the controls for a gamepad, adding offline bot matches, and building a set of exclusive maps. It supported online play through Xbox Live, which made it the first way to play Counter-Strike from a couch.

The Xbox version was well received but never developed a lasting competitive community, and it remained the only console Counter-Strike until Global Offensive launched on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in 2012.

5. Counter-Strike Neo – 2003 / 2005

Counter-Strike Neo is the strangest entry on this list. Licensed by Valve to Namco, it was an arcade cabinet built for Japan's LEDZONE arcade network. Location tests ran in 2003, with a wider rollout around 2005. The terrorist and counter-terrorist factions were replaced with two stylised, anime-inspired forces, and the game was supported by promotional comics and a card-based player ID system. Its online service ran until 2010, and it was never released outside Japan.

6. Counter-Strike: Condition Zero – March 2004

Condition Zero had one of the longest and messiest development cycles in Valve's history. It passed through Rogue Entertainment, Gearbox Software, and Ritual Entertainment before Turtle Rock Studios finally shipped it on March 23, 2004. The finished product was an enhanced version of 1.6 with updated character models and maps, plus a single-player Tour of Duty mode in which players completed objectives against bots of increasing difficulty.

Bundled alongside it was Condition Zero: Deleted Scenes, the remains of Ritual's cancelled version, which offered a set of linear, story-driven missions. Neither mode replaced 1.6 competitively, but Condition Zero's bots were among the best of the era and its assets are still borrowed by 1.6 server owners today.

2004–2012: The Source Era

Half-Life 2 introduced the Source engine in 2004, and Counter-Strike was the first multiplayer game to be rebuilt on it. This period also saw the franchise licensed to Nexon for a free-to-play version aimed at Asian markets.

7. Counter-Strike: Source – October 2004

Counter-Strike: Source was released on October 7, 2004, roughly a month before Half-Life 2, as a complete remake of the original game on Valve's new engine. Every classic map was rebuilt with dynamic lighting, ragdoll physics, and physically simulated props. Gameplay stayed close to 1.6, but the different movement feel and hitboxes split the community for years; competitive leagues largely stayed on 1.6, while Source found its own audience in custom-content servers.

Where Source really thrived was modding. SourceMod launched in 2007 and made server-side plugins far easier to write than they had been on GoldSrc, and the result was a golden age of community modes: Zombie Escape, Surf, Bhop, Jailbreak, Deathrun, Minigames, and hundreds more. Source received Mac support in 2010 and Linux support in 2013, and it still has an active, if smaller, community server scene in 2026.

8. Counter-Strike Online – 2008

Counter-Strike Online was developed by South Korean publisher Nexon under licence from Valve and launched in 2008 for South Korea, China, Taiwan, and other Asian territories. Built on GoldSrc, it kept the core 1.6 gameplay but wrapped it in a free-to-play model with microtransactions, unlockable weapons, character skins, and a large catalogue of PvE modes, including the zombie infection mode that became its signature. It was hugely successful in its target markets and is still operating in several regions.

2012–2023: Global Offensive

9. Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – August 2012

Global Offensive released on August 21, 2012, developed by Hidden Path Entertainment in partnership with Valve. It launched on Windows, Mac, Linux, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3, though the console versions were quickly abandoned. CS:GO reunited the 1.6 and Source communities on a single game and introduced features that would define the franchise for a decade: competitive matchmaking with skill group ranks, the Molotov and decoy grenades, new weapons like the Zeus and the CZ-75, and Arms Race and Demolition modes.

The turning point came in August 2013 with the Arms Deal update, which added weapon skins, cases, and keys. Cosmetics turned CS:GO into a cultural and economic phenomenon, and the accompanying Operations and Valve-sponsored Majors built the largest esports scene in the genre. CS:GO went free-to-play in December 2018 with the Danger Zone battle royale mode, and in 2023 it became the first game on Steam to pass 1.8 million concurrent players. Community servers for surf, retake, KZ, and zombie escape flourished on top of SourceMod throughout its life.

10. Counter-Strike Online 2 – December 2013

Nexon followed up its first licensed game with Counter-Strike Online 2, a Source engine sequel released in South Korea in December 2013 and later in China and Taiwan. It modernised the visuals and carried over the free-to-play structure, but it never matched the popularity of the original Counter-Strike Online. Servers were shut down in 2018.

11. Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies – October 2014

Counter-Strike Nexon: Zombies brought Nexon's version of Counter-Strike to the West. It launched worldwide on Steam on October 7, 2014, as a free-to-play GoldSrc game with 50 maps and 20 modes, most of them zombie-themed PvE and PvP variants alongside the classic bomb and hostage modes. Reviews criticised the dated engine and aggressive monetisation, but it built a niche audience and was rebranded as Counter-Strike Nexon: Studio in 2019 with the addition of a map editor. It remains playable today.

2023–Present: Counter-Strike 2

12. Counter-Strike 2 – September 2023

Counter-Strike 2 was announced in March 2023 and released on September 27, 2023, as a free upgrade that replaced CS:GO outright. Every player's inventory, rank, and stats carried across. Built on Source 2, it introduced sub-tick server updates that register movement and shooting between ticks, volumetric smoke grenades that react to gunfire and explosions, a full lighting overhaul, and a new Premier competitive mode with a numerical CS Rating and map pick-and-ban.

The launch was turbulent. Community server support arrived without SourceMod or Workshop map integration, and many custom modes took months to return as the modding scene rebuilt itself around CounterStrikeSharp and Metamod for Source 2. Nearly three years later, the picture is very different. CS2 set a Steam all-time record of over 1.86 million concurrent players in April 2025, it regularly exceeds 1.2 million concurrent players every day in 2026, and the community server ecosystem for surf, retakes, deathmatch, KZ, and zombie escape has fully recovered. It is, by a wide margin, the most-played game on Steam.

Which Counter-Strike Should You Play in 2026?

For almost everyone the answer is Counter-Strike 2. It is free, it has the largest player base by an enormous margin, it is the only version with official matchmaking and an active professional circuit, and its custom server scene has matured. If you are new to the series, start here.

That said, the older games are not dead, and there are good reasons to run them. Counter-Strike 1.6 has the deepest catalogue of classic mods and runs on almost any hardware, which makes it a favourite for nostalgia communities, LAN events, and regions where low-spec PCs are common. Counter-Strike: Source remains the home of several custom modes, especially Zombie Escape and certain surf and Minigames communities, that have never fully migrated. And CS:GO's legacy build still has a following among players who prefer its movement and hit registration, although it no longer receives updates and has no official matchmaking.

If you want to build a community around any of them, running your own server is the way to control the maps, modes, rules, and player experience. Citadel Servers offers managed hosting for Counter-Strike 2, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, Counter-Strike: Source, and Counter-Strike 1.6, all on the same control panel with the same DDoS protection and support.

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