Following a not-so-mysterious countdown on a CS:GO Chinese website domain, Valve has officially announced the launch of their competitive first-person shooter, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the Chinese market.
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The launch will be handled by Chinese video game development company Perfect World, which has previously partnered with Valve for the Chinese launch of their MOBA, DOTA 2.
Although Counter-Strike has been available in China already for quite some time, this official release will likely bolster the game's fan-base with fresh updates and patches.
CS:GO will be competing with gaming giant CrossFire, a shooter of a similar design and currently the most popular FPS in the world.
A rough translation of the game's official event launch offers us some additional details:
Servers provided by Perfect World will provide a tickrate of 128 ticks-per-second. For those unfamiliar with server netcode, tickrate refers to the amount of updates a server can process in one second. The higher the tickrate, the less lag there is for players to struggle with.
Additionally, while CS:GO will launch free-to-play, accounts will be bound to the Alipay credit system, which links a user's account with their credit card, residence, and ID. This could potentially reduce the usual amount of cheating associated with free titles.
The event also boasts the launch of the CS:GO China Pro League, though whether or not it will interact with western esports is not yet known.
