Valve Releases Free Version Of CS: GO For Offline Play & GOTV Viewing

In just a couple of weeks, the second Major Counter-Strike: Global Offensive of the year is set to go down in London. This is going to be the first Major to be held by FACEIT, and like before, it follows a 24-team format, and has $1,000,000 up for grabs.

Given that this FACEIT Major is going to be running for a few weeks, it goes without saying that fans are going to have a lot to tune into. At the same time, the tournament could bring about intrigued outsiders discovering the game for the first time (or, at least those starting to pay attention to it). Or maybe someone still hasn’t managed to have GO wind up in their Steam account (that’s how it feels like it happens) at some point. A “Free” version of the game couldn’t hurt, and now, we have one.

The ultimate reason for a free version of CS: GO is unclear, but you should really taper your expectations, because its feature set is on the slim side. On one hand, it’s offline-only, but that does grant complete newbies the ability to play against bots, and start to get a decent feel for what online play might entail (I doubt the bots are programmed to insult your mother, but anything is better than nothing).

The other “Major” feature is that you can watch GOTV content with the free version of the game, making it useful to download and install the game on a second PC, should you want to activate the game on a “throwaway” account (not everyone is comfortable logging into someone else’s PC with their main account). Since the game is forced to offline mode, there’s no risk of people exploiting the cost-free benefit of the game to troll others.

A free version of the game isn’t all that’s new. With a new update, the game’s Panorama interface gets some extra polish, and at the same time, the old Scaleform UI has been completely removed (a startup switch won’t help you here).

You can read more on the updates here, and if you’re interested in the free version of the game, you can go right to the store page.