A gorgeous ground-up remake of Counter-Strike 1.6 is on its way to Steam, and one of the game's original creators says 'it really gives me old vibes'

A Counter-Strike 1.6 remake by some of the most experienced modders in the game's history has been announced and is coming to Steam. The game is called Counter-Strike: Legacy, will apparently launch in early access this year, and is built using Valve’s 2013 Source software development kit "on top of our own major rewrites to the renderer, shaders and various systems."

The project has been announced with a trailer that shows, yep, this sure looks like a much prettier version of 1.6 but is fundamentally still 1.6. I'm far from an expert but everything about the way this moves seems perfect, and the footage goes out of its way to showcase the movement around environments and various skill shots.

You don't need to take my word for it anyway.

"Wow, it really gives me old CS 1.6 vibes," says Minh 'Gooseman' Le, one of the co-creators of Counter-Strike. "I love it! They even used the original animations for the character deaths and weapons. Hopefully Valve allows this to get released without any issues…"

That's an interesting question: The teaser suggests a veneer of legitimacy to this, and Valve is obviously a generally pro-modding company that has allowed, for example, the Half-Life remake Black Mesa to officially release on Steam. But then it's also recently blocked a similar-ish CS:GO 1.6 mod, Classic Offensive, from being on Steam, though at least it's now communicating with that team.

I've reached out to ask whether CS: Legacy has Valve's blessing (and what the CS2 team thinks of it), and will update with any response.

The teaser also mentions that this comes from some of the team behind ProMod, a fan remake project dating back to 2006 that had its origins in dissatisfaction with 2004's Counter-Strike: Source. The idea there was basically 1.6 but with better graphics, but then Counter-Strike: Global Offensive launched in 2012 and ProMod's development also ground to a halt.

I haven't played ProMod but it certainly has fans and, either way, you can't walk through the Counter-Strike community without tripping over a 1.6 truther.

In fact, the CSProMod X account came back to life after 13 years to contextualise this project as a continuation: "CS: Legacy, our follow up to CSP, is a fully standalone remake of Counter-Strike 1.6, built from the ground-up on Valve's official Source Engine SDK." The CS ProMod page on NexusMods also popped back to life to say pretty much the same thing.

"We’ve carefully recreated every detail of the original gameplay, while introducing modern enhancements and major technical improvements—all without losing the classic CS feel that made it legendary," says the project's Patreon page (uh-oh).

This text is where I start to worry about CS: Legacy's prospects:

"Full Remake, Not Just a Mod—Built from scratch with 100% custom code, 3D assets, levels, textures, characters, UI, weapons etc. We own the entirety of our work, which guarantees the game's future and unlimited potential."

I am really, really not sure that the team behind this should be claiming "we own the entirety of our work" when this is straight-up a remake of a Valve game using a Valve name set to release on Steam and trying to solicit donations. It is also slightly pompous to say "we improved Valve’s Source Engine" even if your modifications are very impressive.

CS: Legacy certainly looks the part, but a trailer is a trailer. Counter-Strike released in 2000, and CS 1.6 was the final release in 2003. What's here looks amazing in places, but one does wonder about whether this will ever actually be released on Steam.

Mind you, Valve doesn't need to worry about the 1.6 diehards. Two days ago Counter-Strike 2 set a new concurrent player count record: An astonishing 1,824,989 people playing at once.