CS:GO beta: the 2011 stress test, the delay and the 2012 key waves

Valve opened the first stress test of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive on Nov. 30, 2011. It had a limited set of weapons, items and game modes. On Feb. 14, 2012, Valve announced the start of the Beta and began handing out keys in waves.

Reveal, alpha builds and a delayed start

According to Wikipedia, Global Offensive began development in March 2010 and was revealed to the public on Aug. 12, 2011. The project started when Hidden Path Entertainment tried to port Counter-Strike: Source to consoles, and Valve then saw a chance to turn the port into a full game.

Before any beta, the game was shown at events. Fan site CounterStrikeGO.com wrote at the time that showmatches at PAX, Eurogamer, IEM NYC and Dreamhack all used the same old alpha build. PC Gamer reported that beta keys were handed out at PAX Prime and the Eurogamer Expo.

The beta was first expected earlier. On Oct. 31, 2011, PC Gamer wrote that the closed beta was to start that month with 10,000 participants. Citing a CVG report, it said Valve had pushed it back after criticism from the pro players testing the game.

“They gave us a lot of feedback on things we should get in the game before we release it, otherwise we’re going to be getting a lot of bug reports or a lot of feedback and it would just be redundant,” Valve’s Chet Faliszek said, as quoted by PC Gamer. He added: “We have no mandate from anybody of when we have to ship this. So we’re more than happy to just keep working on this until it’s ready to ship.”

The Nov. 30 date

The start date came through the official CS:GO developer Twitter account. CounterStrikeGO.com posted the news on Nov. 18, and PC Gamer followed on Nov. 21. Both said the beta would begin with two maps, Dust and Dust II, and that a key was required.

PC Gamer quoted the account as saying the testing period “will start small and grow until eventually everyone is in.” On changes, the developers said: “Everything. Everything is open to change in the beta.”

Fan site posts at the time reported that the beta would be PC only and that Valve had promised more keys over time. The post drew 212 responses, many of them requests for a key.

Nov. 30, 2011: the stress test goes live

Valve wrote on its blog that day: “Today, CSGO starts its first stress test of our servers and a variety of client hardware.” Players with a key were asked to join a match and give feedback in the Steam forums. For everyone else, Valve said the test was closed while it tested its server and client systems.

CounterStrikeGO.com described the contents on launch day:

• Only two maps, de_dust and de_dust2, so Defusal was the only game mode.
• One player model per side: the Elite Crew for Terrorists and Seal Team Six for Counter-Terrorists.
• A build that the site called much more recent than the alpha shown at events, built on feedback from CS:S and CS 1.6 pros.

The site also said Valve was not increasing the size of the beta for now. Streams from ESL.tv, VolcanoTV and FNATIC were already live, and MLG TV was expected to follow.

Wikipedia puts the initial group at around 10,000 people who had received a key at events.

Feb. 14, 2012: the Beta begins

Valve’s “Welcome to Counter-Strike.net” post said that day was the kickoff of the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Beta. Players still in the stress test would see more maps, more weapons and “most importantly more players.”

Valve wrote that Counter-Strike had been around for 12 years and had been played by over 25 million players. It said it wanted to capture that experience as it shaped Global Offensive.

Access was tied to activity. Valve gave Beta access to the top 7,000 active players in CS:S and CS 1.6 that week, plus extra keys for the top 500 CS:GO players. It also gave keys to prominent community sites to distribute over the following weeks.

Valve said it would release a short survey in a few weeks to pick the next batch. It also promised to start regularly sharing data from the game, such as whether maps were balanced and which weapons performed best on which maps.

Feb. 22, 2012: the survey opens

On Feb. 22, Valve wrote that it had launched the Beta by giving 7,000 keys to current CS:S and CS 1.6 players. Another 2,000 keys had gone to community sites on the Monday of that week.

The online survey was then opened to everyone, and Valve said the next keys would be sent on the basis of it. Players who skipped it would not get a key. Valve said it would make selections over the coming months, sometimes adding experienced players, sometimes new ones, sometimes 1.6 players, sometimes CS:S players and sometimes people who had played neither. It said there were no wrong answers.

Active beta players could also earn gift keys to share with friends. Valve wrote that earning them was easy: “hit quick match and play CS:GO.”

March 16, 2012: weekly updates and more invites

By March the beta had a weekly rhythm. CounterStrikeGO.com reported that the March 16 update switched quick match to cs_italy. It also added the Arsenal: Demolition map St. Marc and four guns: the FAMAS, Galil AR, P250 and Dual Berettas. The site said chickens were back in Italy, near the CT spawn. Demolition matches now consisted of two 10-round halves.

Valve sent another wave of invites to survey takers and some beta passes that players could give to friends. The fan site said it had no keys of its own to give out that week.

Valve also posted on its official blog that day about how it handles beta feedback. The fan site quoted it as saying, “No feedback is ignored.” Valve described some feedback as acted on directly, some as needing more data and some as ongoing work, such as adjusting fog levels.

What came next

According to Wikipedia, Valve announced at E3 2012 that Global Offensive would be released on Aug. 21, 2012, with the open beta starting roughly a month before that. The game was released that day on all platforms except Linux, which followed on Sept. 23, 2014.