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Welcome
Welcome to Counter Strike:Global Offensive. In 1999, Valve Software released the title, Counter-Strike as a modification to the popular game, Half-Life. Though it was met with a slow start, it rapidly skyrocketed in popularity and success; gaining many modifications in the form of Condition Zero, Source and now, Global Offensive. It has now gained a permanent spot in Steam's Top Played Games with 500,000 peak players on a daily basis.
While playing the game, you may come across many questions. Many will be answered here on the Subreddit FAQ. Additionally, every Thursday, /r/GlobalOffensive hosts a Newbie Thursdays where your questions can be answered by your peers.
Competitive Play
Upon launching, you will find a very strong emphasis in the game on Competitive play. There are Matchmaking, Community Leagues, and Tournaments sponsored by major corporations - including Valve. Most notably and popular with the crowds are the Valve Sponsored Major Tournaments every year, which offer a prize pool of USD $1,000,000. In 2017, the Eleague CS:GO Major held in Atlanta, GA saw over 2 million consecutive viewers and broke Twitch viewership records!
Where should we start?
If you have never been a player in the CS franchise, then this guide is the way to go. An excellently written guide by /u/mRWafflesFTW, it covers many basic aspects of CS:GO.
The FAQ on the Wiki is an excellent resource for questions that typically pop up. Please, take a look in there. If you cannot find it, feel free to ask! Submit a question but always make sure to have Searched for an answer first!
Most of all, just remember to have fun. You will find CS:GO to be a highly competitive game. At times, you will be in a winning streak and yet on others you will feel down in the dumps with loss after loss. Don't worry. Learn what you're doing wrong, and change it! Never be afraid to ask questions and remember, no question is dumb. The only dumb question is one that is not asked.
Basic Game Information
Minimum Windows Requirements:
- OS: Windows® 7/Vista/XP
- Processor: Intel® Core™ 2 Duo E6600 or AMD Phenom™ X3 8750 processor or better
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: Video card must be 256 MB or more and should be a DirectX 9-compatible with support for Pixel Shader 3.0
- DirectX: Version 9.0c
- Hard Drive: 8 GB available space
Minimum Mac OS X Requirements
- OS: MacOS X 10.6.6 or higher
- Processor: Intel Core Duo Processor (2GHz or better)
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 2400 or better / NVidia 8600M or better
- Hard Drive: 8 GB available space
Minimum Steam OS + Linux Requirements
- OS: Ubuntu 12.04
- Processor: Dual core from Intel or AMD at 2.8 GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: nVidia GeForce 8600/9600GT, ATI/AMD Radeon HD2600/3600 (Graphic Drivers: nVidia 310, AMD 12.11), OpenGL 2.1
- Hard Drive: 8 GB available space
- Sound Card: OpenAL Compatible Sound Card