Counter-Strike mod "Classic Offensive" cancelled at last minute

13 May 2025

Not a great month of May for many Counter-Strike fans, or at least, not for those who were looking forward to the long-awaited release of “Classic Offensive”. A group of developers started working on an extensive mod for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive back in 2016, inspired by the original Counter-Strike game that started it all. After being in the works for years, and with the green light from Valve (the studio behind the Counter-Strike franchise), the mod was supposed to be launched on Wednesday May 7th 2025, but according to the developers, they received a cease-and-desist notice hours from Valve hours before the big moment. It is now unclear whether or not “Classic Offensive” will ever be released.

Last-minute disappointment

As of now, there is no official statement from Valve yet in regard to this situation, so we have only the Classic Offensive team’s side of the story to go on. Having said that, it looks like a very unfortunate development in an otherwise very positive project for the wider Counter-Strike community. According to their website, more than one hundred developers worked on the mod over the years, including developers who had previously been involved with Valve itself.

The Classic Offensive mod was supposed to be released on Steam, which is where Counter-Strike is played. As a result of the cancellation, this is now no longer possible, which makes it almost impossible for the mod to reach a larger audience. It could be possible, in theory, for the team to release the Classic Offensive mod outside of Steam, but that comes with a whole host of new challenges that might make the whole ordeal not worth it.

“After eight years of development, and despite being officially greenlit by Valve in 2017, we are devastated to announce the cancellation of Classic Offensive”, writes the team behind Classic Offensive on X, “This decision follows abrupt actions by Valve that prevent us from releasing or continuing development of the project […] We submitted our build for review in October 2024, only to have the project unexpectedly rejected in January 2025 with a generic response stating it was ‘not a good fit’, disregarding our prior Greenlight status.”

Worries about future of modding

With between 800.000 and 1.000.000 players per month on average in 2024, Counter-Strike is still one of the most popular international esports in the world. The Classic Offensive team is beyond disappointed though, and they see Valve’s last-minute U-turn on the mod release as a problem for the wider Counter-Strike community as well. They are worried that what happened to them is a sign of Valve’s changing attitude towards modding in general, which has been an integral part of the Counter-Strike ecosystem since its very beginnings.

“This situation [the last-minute cancellation of the mod] has implications far beyond our project, raising serious concerns for the future of modding within Valve’s ecosystem”, the Classic Offensive team writes, “Modders should reconsider how they see Valve: a company that benefits from community creativity while being able to shut down years of work without warning, despite going through their defined process which they can drastically change at any time.”