How Counter-Strike was created

In late 1999, Minh Le, a computer science major studying at Simon Fraser University, was playing Half-Life. He modified this game for a few months, and this became the new best video game ever.

At first, this felt like a project to pass the time, but as he continued to code throughout the night, he began to enjoy this. He also called his friend, Jess Cliffe, to come and code the game with him. They did this through late 1999, and Counter-Strike was the final project.

Half-Life is a game about a lab experiment that created a portal to another dimension, where the player has to fight off the aliens from a first-person point of view. First-person is when the game screen shows what you see from your eyes. While third third-person point of view is when the game screen is behind you, showing your body and more of the surroundings.

Modifying or modding a game is much easier to do compared to creating a new video game from scratch. Modding games is also much faster, and it could also give the chance to combine specific parts of other video games.

After Counter-Strike was created, it became the most popular game at the time. By the year 2000, everyone was talking about it while Minh Le and his friend got rich. This game gained lots of attention, and soon it reached the creator of Half-Life, Valve.

Valve told Minh Le he was impressed with how fun the game is, and he wanted to purchase the game and give him a job at Valve Corporation. Unfortunately, Valve didn’t tell anyone how much money they used to purchase Counter-Strike.

Minh Le worked at Valve on Counter-Strike. The game grew even more as more people started to play it. There were even tournaments with money prizes for the winner. Minh Le even played at one of them, he said, “I haven’t even played it in like 10 years.”

As Counter-Strike continues to grow, Valve and Minh Le began working on a sequel. This game was released on September 27, 2023, and followed the huge success of the original game. Valve made close to one billion dollars with Counter-Strike 2 in 2024.