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.
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.
