The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta has now launched and the servers are live. As of the writing of this post 592 people were playing, the peak for the game so far. The beta is in theory private but numerous websites and twitter personalities can be found giving away keys to lucky members of the public.

Beta 1.0 of the original Counter-Strike was released on the 19th of June 1999. At the time there was no de_ gamemode, with cs_ hostage play the only format, and there were only four maps: seige, mansion, wpndepot and prison. There was also no desert eagle, Aug, Sig and most of the semi-automatic weapons had not been added.