Take the maps, skins, and overall balance and feel of classic Counter-Strike and remake it all using the tech that powers CSGO. That was the dream of Classic Offensive, a long-running mod project that first started life back in 2017. But now, eight years after development began, according to its creators, Classic Offensive has been shut down by Valve. The Half-Life and Left 4 Dead developer has seemingly sent a cease and desist letter to the Classic Offensive team, preventing further builds of the unofficial remake from being released on all other modding platforms.
The Classic Offensive team says that its would-be FPS game was submitted to Valve in October 2024. Three months later, in January of this year, Valve reportedly rejected Classic Offensive from Steam, telling the development team that it was "not a good fit."
The latest version of Classic Offensive was then due to be released on Mod DB – early-access builds were launched on the site up until 2021. But a new cease and desist letter from Valve, which allegedly blocks the release of any further updates, has apparently killed the project for good.
"After eight years of development, and despite being officially Greenlit by Valve in 2017, we are devastated to announce the cancellation of Classic Offensive," the project's creators claim. "The decision follows abrupt actions by Valve that prevent us from releasing or continuing development on the project.
"As we prepared to update via Mod DB… we received a cease and desist notification from Valve's socials just hours before launch. In follow-up communications, they clarified that releasing Classic Offensive would be distributing 'derivative content' based on their intellectual property, which is not permitted under the Steam subscriber agreement."
PCGamesN has ed Valve and will update this story with any comment from the developer.
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