Counter-Strike
Play the world's number 1 online action game. Engage in an incredibly realistic brand of terrorist warfare in this wildly popular team-based game. Ally with teammates to complete strategic missions. Take out enemy sites. Rescue hostages. Your role affects your team's success. Your team's success affects your role.
First-Person ShooterStrategySurvival
Your like matters. Every heart nudges this game's GamingPickz Score and where it ranks (a small 5% of the score), so the lists get better for everyone.
- Released
- 2000
- Developer
- Valve
- Platforms
- 1 systems
- Critics
- 88
- Steam Deck
- playable
- Download
- Not stated
What is Counter-Strike?
Play the world's number 1 online action game. Engage in an incredibly realistic brand of terrorist warfare in this wildly popular team-based game. Ally with teammates to complete strategic missions. Take out enemy sites. Rescue hostages. Your role affects your team's success. Your team's success affects your role.
Description as published by the developer on its own store page, read 30 August 2026. It is marketing copy, not our assessment.
The record
| First released | 31 October 2000 |
|---|---|
| Developer | Valve |
| Publisher | Valve |
| Platforms | PC |
| Genres | First-Person Shooter, Strategy, Survival |
| Languages | 8 supported |
Source. Catalogue facts from Wikidata , seeded TBA. Store data from Steam, read 30 August 2026.
How was Counter-Strike received?
Method. Player figures are Steam's own totals for the PC version, read 30 August 2026. The Metacritic score is the one Steam publishes on its store page and can lag the site itself. Metacritic page. Neither is our opinion. We have not published a review of this game.
Accessibility
Seeing
- Color Alternatives
Hearing
- Custom Volume Controls
- Stereo Sound
Input
- Keyboard Only Option
Difficulty
None declared
Method. Features the publisher declared on its own store page. A declaration is a floor, not a review.
What does it support?
| Capability | Support |
|---|---|
| Controller | Not stated |
| Cloud saves | No |
| Cross-platform play | No |
| Mod support | No official workshop |
| Online play | Yes |
| In-game purchases | No |
| Steam Deck | playable |
| Download size | Not stated |
| Add-on content | None listed |
| Age gate | None |
Content descriptors
- Frequent violence or gore
- General mature content
Method. Read from the publisher's Steam listing on 30 August 2026. Describes the PC version. Console versions differ.
What does it cost?
Steam price in US dollars, read 30 August 2026. Prices move hourly and vary by region. Check the current price.
Is Counter-Strike worth it?
97% of 261,499 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Overwhelmingly Positive. It costs $9.99 on Steam, and critics score it 88/100. About 7,323 people were playing at once when we last checked, so it is still active.
That is the data, not a verdict for sale: whether it is worth it depends on the price you pay and what you want. We have not published our own review of this game.
How long is Counter-Strike? How long to beat it
Total play time for Counter-Strike is about 774.8 hours to do everything, and around 25.4 hours to reach the end of the main story. These are player-submitted times from HowLongToBeat, not our own, shown with the number of players behind each.
| How you play | Hours | Players logged |
|---|---|---|
| Just the main story: straight through the critical path | 25.4h | 40 |
| Main + the extras: story plus the side content most people do | 91.3h | 15 |
| Completionist: everything: 100% the game | 774.8h | 13 |
At its current price of $9.99, beating the main story works out to about $0.39 per hour. That is the price divided by the hours, a value read and not a verdict: a longer game costs less per hour, which is not the same as being the better game.
Source: HowLongToBeat community submissions, read 2026-10-19.
Where Counter-Strike sits on the grid
Compare the whole catalogueCounter-Strike plotted on the axes the GamingPickz Score is built from, on the full 0 to 100 scale so its position is its real one. Change either axis to see where it lands.
1 games have both
Players. The share of Steam reviews marked positive, pulled toward the catalogue average in proportion to how few reviews stand behind it. A game with 200 reviews moves a long way toward the average; one with 200,000 barely moves at all. Without this a title sitting at 100 percent on nine reviews outranks Half-Life 2 at 98 percent on 278,000.
Popularity. A blend of two things that are not the same. Audience is how many people wrote a Steam review, which is a floor on how many played it. Reach is how many language editions of Wikipedia document the game, which is cultural footprint rather than sales. A game can score high on one and low on the other: a huge free-to-play title has audience without reach, and a landmark console exclusive has reach without a Steam audience at all. Where both exist they are averaged; where only one does, that one carries it.
- PC
Every point links to that game's entry. The value map and the reception map are fixed views of the same data.
How positions are decided
No paid placement, no favouritism, live third-party data
- Placed by the published method, not by us. Every coordinate is computed from the axis definitions and weights printed on this site. Nobody moves a point. See the axes.
- Nothing here is paid for. No sponsored placements, no promoted slots, no arrangement of any kind affects a position. If that ever changes it will be labelled and sit outside the ranking.
- No favouritism, including our own. The 16 games we have written full reviews of are scored by exactly the same formula as the other 1,510, from the same third-party inputs, and they land where it puts them. Our own opinion of a game does not enter its coordinates.
- A position is not an endorsement. It says how a game was received and what it costs, not that we recommend it. Where we do recommend something, it carries a written review with a name on it.
- Fetched from live third-party data. Player sentiment from Steam, critic aggregates as published on store pages, prices checked hourly, attention from Wikipedia. Each figure carries its source and the date it was read, and we do not adjust any of them.
Is Counter-Strike still active? Players right now
Counter-Strike has a healthy, active player base: 7,323 people were playing at once when we last read Steam on 19 October 2026. This is a snapshot, not a live counter, and it is a recent concurrent reading rather than an all-time record. For what is trending across the catalogue right now, see the pulse.
How many people own Counter-Strike
This is an estimate, not a sales figure, and the two are not interchangeable. SteamSpy samples public profiles and publishes a range; the range here spans a factor of 2.0, and that width is the honest part of it. We show both ends rather than a midpoint, because a midpoint would look like a measurement.
Steam only. Console and storefront sales are not counted, so a game that sold heavily elsewhere reads low here. Read on 19 October 2026. Where a publisher has announced a real unit figure, that appears separately and carries its source.
Estimated sales for Counter-Strike
These are estimates, not reported figures. Valve has not published unit sales for Counter-Strike, and nobody outside the company can measure them. What follows is arithmetic on the review count, with the method printed below so you can check it or reject it.
How this was calculated
Steam sales track review counts closely enough that dividing one by the other across games with published figures gives a usable multiplier. This is the standard method for estimating sales from outside a publisher.
| Reviews on Steam | 261,499 |
|---|---|
| Sales per review | 30 to 60 |
| List price | $9.99 |
| Assumed average selling price | 33% to 66% of list |
| SteamSpy owner estimate | 10M–20M, a different measure, see below |
What this cannot tell you
Steam only. Console, Epic, GOG and retail sales are not in here. For a game that sold heavily on PlayStation this is a fraction of the real number.
The band is wide because the method is imprecise. Review rates vary with price, genre, launch era and how insistently a game asks. Published analyses put the ratio between 30 and 60 for paid games, and we show the whole range rather than picking a point in it.
The owner estimate above measures something else. SteamSpy counts accounts that have the game, which includes free weekends, bundles, giveaways and gifts. It sits higher than a sales figure for that reason, and the two are not alternative answers to the same question.
Revenue is the shakiest line. It assumes an average selling price well below list because most copies move in sales, and it ignores regional pricing, refunds, key resellers and whatever deal the publisher actually has with Valve. Treat it as an order of magnitude, not a figure.
If Valve publishes a real number we will use that instead and say where it came from. Our editorial policy covers how we handle figures we cannot verify.
Counter-Strike price & deals: is it on sale?
We have one reading so far: $9.99 on 30 August 2026. Prices are checked daily from here, and this becomes a chart once there is more than one point to join. A single observation is a price, not a history.
Latest Counter-Strike updates & patch notes
Pulled from Counter-Strike's own Steam feed on 5 September 2026. Posts marked as from the studio were written by the developer; the rest are articles Steam syndicated from elsewhere. Every one links to its source.
- World of Warcraft gets a perfect recreation of Counter-Strike's most iconic map, and it's even got Goose
- You can now play Counter-Strike 1.6 in VR thanks to the modders who already gave Half-Life and Doom the same treatment
- Development of a Counter-Strike 1.6 remake has been "frozen" as Valve silence leaves its future in doubt
What readers say about Counter-Strike
Reviews written by people who have played it. These are separate from the GamingPickz Score and are never averaged into it: that score comes from thousands of Steam reviews with a sample-size correction, and a handful of unverified ratings would distort it rather than improve it.
Loading reviews…
Did it run on your PC?
Tell other players how it ran on your machine. One tap, from your saved PC if you have one.
Where Counter-Strike appears
The ranked lists and finder pages Counter-Strike qualifies for, from its own genre and platform to what it takes to run.
Get the weekly rundown
One email a week: what moved in the rankings, what launched, and what dropped in price. No more than that, and unsubscribing takes one click.
We send the weekly email and nothing else. Your address is never sold, shared or used to build a profile, and it is not readable by anyone visiting this site. See our privacy policy.
Games like Counter-Strike
24 games overlap with Counter-Strike on the tags Steam players applied to it, on genre, and on theme. The closest are Counter-Strike: Source, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Part of the Counter-Strike series
Counter-Strike is one of 5 Counter-Strike games we track. See the whole series ranked by the GamingPickz Score, plotted on the grid, and listed in release order:
Counter-Strike head to head
See Counter-Strike compared side by side, on score, price, specs and more:
More Counter-Strike comparisons: vs Portal, vs Schedule I, vs Left 4 Dead 2, vs Team Fortress 2, vs Red Dead Redemption 2, vs Resident Evil 4, vs ULTRAKILL, vs Titanfall 2, vs Garry's Mod, vs Half-Life: Alyx, vs Baldur's Gate 3, vs Divinity: Original Sin 2 - Definitive Edition, vs Satisfactory, vs Slay the Spire, vs Bloons TD 6, vs Persona 5 Royal, vs Plants vs. Zombies GOTY Edition, vs Sid Meier's Civilization V, vs Totally Accurate Battle Simulator, vs Factorio, vs Oxygen Not Included, vs Inscryption, vs R.E.P.O., vs Terraria, vs Project Zomboid, vs Resident Evil 2, vs Risk of Rain 2, vs Among Us, vs Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007), vs Far Cry 3, vs Five Nights at Freddy's, vs Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory, vs Orcs Must Die!, vs Crysis 3 Remastered, vs Sniper Ghost Warrior Contracts 2, vs Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Wildlands, vs Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30, vs Call to Arms - Gates of Hell: Ostfront, vs Day of Defeat: Source, vs Frostpunk, vs Homefront, vs Insurgency, vs Killing Floor, vs Kingdom: Classic, vs Outlast, vs Payday 2, vs Red Orchestra 2: Heroes of Stalingrad with Rising Storm, vs S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl, vs Sanctum 2, vs Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege, vs Town of Salem
Common questions about Counter-Strike
What platforms is Counter-Strike on?
Counter-Strike is available on PC. It first released in 2000.
How much does Counter-Strike cost?
$9.99 on Steam in the United States, read on 30 August 2026. Prices move often and vary by region, so check the store before buying.
Do players recommend Counter-Strike?
97% of 261,499 Steam reviews are positive, which Steam rates Overwhelmingly Positive. That is players rating it, not our review. We have not published a review of this game.
What is the Metacritic score for Counter-Strike?
88 out of 100 for the PC version, as published on the game's own Steam store page. Steam can lag Metacritic by a few points.
Does Counter-Strike work on Steam Deck?
Valve rates Counter-Strike as playable on the Steam Deck, from its own testing.
Who made Counter-Strike?
Counter-Strike was developed by Valve and published by Valve.
Is Counter-Strike worth it in 2026?
97% of 261,499 Steam reviews are positive (Overwhelmingly Positive), and it is $9.99 on steam. That is the strongest signal we hold; "worth it" depends on the price you pay and what you want, so weigh the sentiment against the current price above.
Is Counter-Strike dead?
No. About 7,323 people were in-game at once when we last read Steam's concurrent-player figure. Peak activity is higher; this is a recent snapshot, not the all-time peak.
Is Counter-Strike on sale?
Not at the moment. Counter-Strike is at its $9.99 list price on Steam, read on 30 August 2026. It has been cheaper before; the price history above shows when.
How long does it take to beat Counter-Strike?
about 25.4 hours for the main story, 91.3 hours with the main extras, 774.8 hours to complete everything, from HowLongToBeat's player-submitted times. These are community medians, so your own run may be shorter or longer.