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Comment by xnorswap | Hacker News Reader

I remember, but I also remember the downside - that as the game got older joining a server became a shit-show.

By the end there was literally one CS server I trusted to be friendly and busy and not running "rpg-mod" or "zombie-mod" or a thousand other adjustments I didn't like, such as "no-awp", "price adjusted" etc.

Just finding a vanilla experience became difficult, doubly so if you wanted more than "dust/dust2 only".

Add in the fact that these servers could send your computer files (in theory just maps, sounds and decals, but difficult to secure of course), and you can see why companies shy away, not just to have greater control of the experience.

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Brings back memories of being an admin on a CS 1.6 server and having the ability to send a command that would open a person's CD Drive

We had "local build servers" at one of my previous jobs. Those servers - normal towers, not racks - would communicate they are working on some job by opening CD Drives.

Brilliant. I love this. Thank you for sharing.

CS 1.6 private servers were great. roll the dice, starwars maps, iceworld...

Some of my best gaming memories. Mouse maps were my absolute favorite

I don’t know why you’d ever want to play anything other than dust2 /s

I raise you Italy and the office map I dorgot the name of and that is most likely just called office...

cs_office if you prefer

That's the ONE! My all tme favorite!

> Add in the fact that these servers could send your computer files (in theory just maps, sounds and decals, but difficult to secure of course), and you can see why companies shy away, not just to have greater control of the experience.

Oh please. That's corporate apologia.

I mean, yeah, those concerns are real but 99.9% of the reasons they aren't doing it anymore is that having a monopoly over servers give them better control over monetization.

You can still have official and community servers by packaging the server alongside the client.

Back when you could mod counter strike locally, skin packs etc.. (I'm sure that even before that when you could mod how others saw you.., but that may be rose tinted glasses).. so much fun.

It's obvious why they stopped it eventually (pldecal.wad pretty much became obligatory porn sprays everywhere), but those were the days.

Dusty Dunes in Holland FTW :)

Well indeed, you could even alter your skins so all players would appear bright pink too. This was before resource checking so such cheating was impossible to detect.

In retrospect it's hard to see how the game wasn't more plagued by cheats than it already was, but again it comes back to learning which servers were good servers and had active moderators who could ban people who were obviously cheating, and the less obvious probably just got away with it but were by definition less disruptive.

Of course, that also led to third party tools like PunkBuster in the end whose function then was later centralised with VAC.

>Back when you could mod counter strike locally

GoldSrc games/mods were the golden age, and I will die on this hill. I preferred Natural Selection over CS, and it was just as moddable. It was the best. I was suited up in Mjolnir armor, wielding the pulse rifle from Aliens, blasting the soldier bugs from Starship Troopers.

Not to mention malware, there have been quite a few exploits for CSGO regarding this.

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