CS Beta

Overview

There is a beta version of Counter-Strike 1.6 available for testing. This beta introduces in game advertising. For the duration of the beta default Valve ads will be used, once the feature is released a wider range of advertisements will be present.

It is funny, more than anything. It's basically showing that Valve sucks so much that they can only release a couple good games, then they get close to going bankrupt so they suck as much money out of those as possible. What is even funnier is that CS wasn't even originally by them. They just bought the rights to it, now they're screwing it up even more.

Warning:This engine is currently in a testing phase. Running this beta version may cause problems running Half-Life 1 games under Steam. If this is the case, please consider submitting a bug report, describing the problem and its repro steps and your system configuration. You can also disable the Counter-Strike beta by following the instructions in the Switching back to the non-beta engine section below.

Getting the Counter-Strike Beta

Install instructions.

To run this beta version you will need to add -beta cs to your command line when you start Steam. This can be done by opening up the Windows shortcut you use to launch Steam and adding -beta cs right after Steam.exe. Please report any bugs or issue you find in this article.

Important: You should also disable Steam from running automatically when Windows starts, to prevent it from running the non-beta Half-Life 1 engine. To disable Steam from running automatically:

1. Open the Steam window.
2. Choose Settings from the File menu.
3. Click on the Interface tab.
4. Uncheck the Run Steam when Windows starts option.

If you wish to have the Counter-Strike Beta launch when Windows starts, you can add a copy of your edited shortcut to the Windows Startup program group, under Start Menu > All Programs > Startup.

Known Issues

• Direct 3D mode does not render advertisments inside of the game environment, only on 2D surfaces
• "tiny" spectator ads in some resolutions
• aliasing in rendering spectator ads in the HUD at certain resolutions
• Huge advertisements are shown on walls, in the spectator hud, and the scoreboard

Bug reporting

To report any issues you find with the Counter-Strike Beta (and not the regular standard engine and games releases), visit these articles:

• Counter-Strike Beta Bug Reports - Report bugs here.
• Talk:Counter-Strike Beta Bug Reports - Discuss bugs here.

Switching back to the non-beta engine

You can revert to the "non-beta" standard Counter-Strike release by following these steps:

1. Exit Steam if it's currently running by right-clicking on the Steam tray icon and choosing Exit.
2. Open the Windows shortcut you use to launch Steam and remove -beta cs.
3. Launch Steam from the shortcut.
4. Re-enable Run Steam when Windows starts option if desired.
5. If you also added a modified Steam shortcut to the Windows Startup program group in order to launch the Counter-Strike Beta automatically, it also must be removed or edited.