In the middle of a thread on the Steam forums speculating about the possibility of a new Counter-Strike game, Valve employee Cliffe dropped two lone words “Global Offensive.” Elsewhere, CVG report that anti-cheat providers ESEA post on their Facebook page with another simple message “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive… More info in the morning.” Just below the post there’s an image of ESEA man Craig Levine turning the gigantic valve in the lobby of Valve’s headquarters in Seattle.
Finally, ESL Pro manager Bastian Vieser tweeted saying “Just spend all day playing the new Counterstrike Global Offensive #CSGO at the #Valve HQ ! God I love my job.”
These strong hints appear in the midst of a sea of rumours suggesting that Valve have been flying out top Counter-Strike community members out to their HQ over the course of the past month.
Cadred’s Richard Lewis spilled the beans on the trips, saying “Valve have approached several top players from across Europe, as well as J3di from the Zblock team, and have invited them to a meeting in their Seattle offices to discuss the future of the game.”
In addition to this, Lambda report that senior level designer at Valve, Iikka Keränen has been answering questions from the community during an event on the TF2Maps server. One player asked Iikka if he is currently creating maps for Team Fortress 2. According to transcripts on the TF2maps forum, he responded to say that he’s currently “working on some counter-strike stuff.” When asked if there was anything new coming to Counter-Strike: Source, he said “can’t really comment right now.”
Elsewhere, Cadred were stonewalled by returning pro player, Marek Kadek. When asked if he’d heard anything about the invites, or been invited himself, he simply returned “no comment.”
There’s no indications as to whether Global Offensive is a brand new entry in the Counter-Strike series, an add-on to Counter-Strike: Source or even a console version of the classic FPS. If the ESEA Facebook post is correct, we’ll know more very soon.
