Classic Offensive devs cancel release after cease-and-desist from Valve

The developers behind Classic Offensive, the community-made remake of the original Counter-Strike for CS:GO, have canceled the project after eight years of development.

In a statement released by the team today, they state that they "received a Cease And Desist notification from Valve's socials just hours before launch" in March. The Classic Offensive team says that Valve's reasoning was that "releasing Classic Offensive would be distributing 'derivative content' based on their intellectual property."

The Classic Offensive devs state that under Valve's current interpretation, community-driven Source mods or "skins" are prohibited. The devs claim this position "stands in stark contrast to "the previous three decades of modding tradition that shaped many of their successful games."

Today's announcement is the latest, and seemingly final tumultuous update for Classic Offensive just this year. The project was removed from Steamworks this past January, and even after it was brought back with a planned March 12th release, that release was blocked by Valve due to unknown compliance issues with the Steam Subscriber Agreement.

The community reaction to Classic Offensive's cancellation has been overwhelmingly negative so far, with many expressing frustration and anger towards Valve.

What Classic Offensive's cancellation and their issues with Valve mean for other remake projects, like full stand-alone CS 1.6 remake CS:Legacy, remains to be seen.