Valve delays Counter-Strike: GO beta

Valve has delayed the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive beta because of feedback given by professional Counter-Strike 1.6 players.

The closed beta was planned for October, and now has no start date.

Professionals were invited to play the game and offer their thoughts. Valve's Chet Faliszek explained that their early access was granted because they could "talk intelligently about the game", whereas with the masses, constructive feedback can be hard to come by.

"They gave us a lot of feedback on things we should get in the game before we release it, otherwise we're going to be getting a lot of bug reports or a lot of feedback and it would just be redundant," Faliszek told two of those professionals, Kyle "Ksharp" Miller and Ronald "Rambo" Kim.

"There's going to be things we're going to release it with knowing we need to add more, to do more. But just knowing there's some feel and some just operating the game issues that need to be resolved first. We want to get those done first."

Faliszek didn't say when the closed beta will begin. But when testing does begin, around 10,000 people will be invited to participate. "After that we'll grow it in steps as we get a test server infrastructure and scalability," he explained.

"The biggest thing of those first 10,000 is we have to look at percentage of crashes. You can argue with us on bullet-spray patterns and all kind of things, but crashes? There's really no argument for that. It shouldn't be happening."

If the beta is released and there are hardware compatibility issues, then "we're going to have to slow the beta down and fix that before we continue on", Faliszek forewarned.

"That'll drive the beginning," he continued. "Eventually it will be open and everyone will be playing it; there will be no barrier to entry. We just need to keep building it slowly."

Faliszek revealed that the beta content will be sparse to begin with, offering roughly one or two maps.

Valve's relaxed approach to beta timings extends to the game's full release. CS: GO was announced as an early 2012 title for PC, PS3 and Xbox 360, but Faliszek said that specifically when the game launches will be down to the community.

"And then when does it end?" Faliszek asked of the beta. "When the community tells us. It ends when it's ready.

"We have no mandate from anybody of when we have to ship this. So we're more than happy to just keep working on this 'til it's ready to ship.

"By the end of this, everyone will be playing the game - it will be the released game that you're just playing. Then, at some point, we'll say, 'OK we're going to release it.'

Faliszek went on to state that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive will be the same game on all three platforms. There will be 16 maps at launch: eight classic maps and eight Gun Game maps.

New modes, such as zombie and deathmatch, will be added post-launch.

Faliszek said CS: GO was based on the Portal 2 version of Source, and requires DirectX 9 only.