I can’t imagine a more cruel fate then being a Russian citizen right now. When the Russian government invaded Ukraine in 2022, they were hit with Sanction’s from several western companies. Russia is barred from accessing payment providers like Apple Pay and Stock exchanges like the NASDAQ, seriously hindering Russia’s ability to gain funding which they could use to fund their War effort.
Now you probably thinking, What does this have to do with Counter Strike? Anyone who’s ever played Counter Strike will be all too familiar with the experience of hearing Angry Russian Teenagers yelling “Cyka Bylat“ down the mic after failing a 1v5 clutch on Dust 2.
Counter Strike is one of the most Popular games in Russia, Approximately 11 percent of Counter Strike player’s are Russian. There are a handful of factor’s that have contributed to why Russian’s adore this game. Some say that they find the games competitive aspects appealing, or perhaps they play it because it’s less graphically demanding then titles like Call of Duty.
Regardless of the reasoning, When it comes to LARPing as Terrorists on a Video Game, Russian gamers can’t get enough, so it came as a shock when Counter Strike 2 launched and made Counter Strike: Global Offensive inaccessible.
Counter Strike 2 is built on Valve’s shiny new Source 2 engine, a far more graphically impressive engine compared to Source 1, which had powered all of Valves games up to that point. This new graphical fidelity would come with more demanding system requirement’s. Western Gamers have ample access to the components required to build a gaming PC but for Russians it’s not so easy.
Russia is still under Sanctions and PC hardware manufacturers such as Nvidia, Intel and IBM were among the companies that chose to cease operation’s in the region when the Invasion began. Meaning Russians were unable to get there hands on the Graphics card’s and such needed to run the game smoothly.
This dire situation is possibly what led to the creation of the Counter Strike game we will be discussing today. Play-CS is a browser based port of Counter Strike 1.6 designed to be played in a web browser. It runs on Xash-3D a fork of the Gold Source engine that’s allows for more ambitious things to be done with the engine such as Total Conversion mods and Port’s to other systems.
Play-CS.com was bought to my attention when a video was recommended to me by the Youtuber ESCalation going over his thoughts and concerns on the game, A lot of which I agreed with. I decided to open the game on Google Chrome and try it for myself. The first thing I noticed when looking up the game was the fact that the Dev’s had misspelled Without as “Wothout“ on the Google page.
The game also prompted me to sign in at multiple points, signing in would require me to link a social media account to the game, Major platforms like Sony and the Zdoom forums get hacked all the time so there’s No way in hell I’m giving my Google account over to some sketchy Russian Crypto Bros.
Anyway, Once I got into the game It was so choppy that you would think the game was mining bitcoin in the background, thankfully that wasn’t the case. The issue went away once I switched to Microsoft edge and I was then able to play the game.
If you’ve ever played counter strike you should know what to expect, Two teams consisting of Terrorists and Counter Terrorists face off against one another in short one life skirmishes while trying to complete their teams objective. Most maps revolve around the Terrorists attempting the detonate a bomb at one of two bombsites while the Counter Terrorists try to stop them.
One feature that sets Counter Strike above other shooters is the Buy menu, where you buy your weapons at the start of each round with currency earned from getting kills and playing the objective.
The best weapons like the AK-47, the M4A1 and the Infamous AWP are the most expensive, Smartly rationing your funds can mean the difference between success and failure. This is where Play-CS drops the ball.
There are two currencies in this game. There’s Gold which is the paid currency that’s currently only used to rent servers, and Cash which you earn in small amounts by playing on ranked servers. Earning cash this way takes a long time but you spend you gold on a premium membership you will gain twice the amount of cash you usually would.
Cash can be used to buy one of two things. You can buy cosmetic skins, consisting mainly of probably stolen female operators wearing skimpy outfits that show ample amount of cleavage, because that’s totally what you would wear in an active warzone.
You can also buy perks that give you item’s like the Desert Eagle, Kevlar, Grenades and the Defuse kit for free at the start of each round, without having to buy them in the buy menu. This is quite blatantly Pay to Win.
Gold can be purchased over PayPal with your local currency but it can also be bought with Bitcoin, which is an odd choice, especially considering Valve’s strong stance against NFT’s and Cryptocurrency.
This port in completely redundant in my opinion, If you want to try it for novelties sake then go for it but I would heavily recommend not putting money into this game as Valve could cease and desist it at any time. You would be better off just buying Counter Strike 1.6, You can get it for like 4$ or less in the steam summer sale and any PC you can get your hands on should be able to play it with no performance issue’s.
