Half-Life: Counter-Strike Announced -- Friday, September 1, 2000 SIERRA STUDIOS AND VALVE ANNOUNCE HALF-LIFE: COUNTER-STRIKE

New Team-Based PC Game Featuring Several Top Half-Life MODs

Bellevue, WA (August 31, 2000) - Sierra Studios(tm) and Valve L.L.C. today announced Half-Life: Counter-Strike, the largest multiplayer game offering in one commercial product, combining all the elements of the Half-Life online universe with new single- and multiplayer content. Half-Life: Counter-Strike is a stand-alone PC game due to ship this fall with all of Valve's multiplayer content, three of the top MODs for Half-Life, and the #1 played online action game*, Counter-Strike.

"Half-Life's online community is growing at a rate of over 500% per year -Counter-Strike is a key part of our strategy to sustain that growth moving forward," said Gabe Newell, managing director of Valve L.L.C. "In addition to offering the number one online action game as a stand-alone product, Half-Life: Counter-Strike delivers all our online games in one package to gamers who have not tried any of these leading online action games."



In development by the Counter-Strike Team in conjunction with Valve, Half-Life: Counter-Strike casts players as a member of either a terrorist or counter-terrorist team. Each team has unique weapons and capabilities. The game is played in a variety of scenarios with varying objectives, including rescue missions, assassination, bomb diffusion, and more. More information on Counter-Strike can be found through the official Web site at http://www.counter-strike.net/.



In addition to Counter-Strike, the entire Half-Life online experience is available within this package including, Half-Life multiplayer, Team Fortress Classic, and Half-Life: Opposing Force multiplayer. And finally, three new MODs, created by some of the top-level designers within the Half-Life community, are also featured. More information on Half-Life and its MODs can be found at www.gameoftheyear.com.



Founded in 1996, Valve develops entertainment software. Half-Life is Valve's debut title. Since its release in November 1998, Half-Life has won over 50 Game of the Year Awards from publications that include PC Gamer, Computer Gaming World, and CNET's Gamecenter and has sold over 2 million units worldwide on the PC. More information about Valve is available through the company's Web site at www.valvesoftware.com.



Sierra On-Line, Inc. (www.sierra.com) is one of the original developers and largest worldwide publishers of interactive entertainment and productivity software. Sierra is a division of Havas Interactive, a global leader in interactive content, and is one of the world's largest publishers of education, entertainment and home productivity software. Its divisions, Blizzard Entertainment(r), Coktel, Knowledge Adventure(r), Sierra(tm) and Flipside.com(tm) are famous for releasing critically acclaimed and award winning titles. Havas has operations in the US and in Europe and is a subsidiary of the French publishing house Havas, part of Vivendi Communications. *According to the leader board on www.gamespy.com ### We want to make it very clear, however, that you will still be able to download Counter-Strike for free from our web site. This standalone version is only for those who don't want to buy Half-Life, and only want CS (at a slightly lower price). Once again, CS will continue to be free and downloaded from this web site.



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[cliffe] Sierra and Valve have officially announced Half-Life: Counter-Strike today. Here's the press release:We want to make it, however, that you will still be able to download Counter-Strike forfrom our web site. This standalone version is only for those who don't want to buy Half-Life, and only want CS (at a slightly lower price). Once again, CS will continue to be free and downloaded from this web site.In b7 news, there is a windows .dll and a Linux .so for server admins who are having the timelimit problem. There are just temporary server side fixes; we'll have a 7.1 patch out sometime in the future which will correct other issues as well.

