Interview with CS-co creator Gooseman: Opinions on CS2, and the Classic Offensive controversy — Part Two

More than two decades since its humble beginnings as a Half-Life mod, Counter-Strike has outlived a lot of other tactical shooters without fundamentally changing. To understand why the game has gone so far, Dust2.us' Leonardo Biazzi spoke to Minh “Gooseman” Le, the co-creator of the original CS.

Gooseman reflects on the unexpected lifespan of the franchise and his impressions of the franchise's latest entry, CS2. He shares his honest opinion on combating cheaters — an issue that dates back to CS 1.6 — and why Valve and other developers have so much trouble finding a solution.

We also went beyond CS2 and asked him about the heartbreaking cancellation of Classic Offensive, a CS:GO mod that the community spent eight years working on. While Gooseman refrains from judging Valve too harshly, his empathy for the creators is notable. As the community continues to shape the future of CS, his reflections serve as a rare, grounding voice from someone who helped start it all.

The interview has been slightly edited for length and clarity.

Did you ever think that CS would reach this level of popularity and last over 20 years?

No, God no. After I stopped working at Valve in 2006, I thought CS would become less popular because I thought the players would move on to other games. I remember some games came out later, like League of Legends, and it became very popular.

When League of Legends started to become popular, I thought 'Oh, okay, now everyone is going to play this and stop playing CS.' I remember there was a time when the CS player count started to go down slowly, right? And so I thought at that point, 'Okay, CS is done, the end is near.'

So, I'm very surprised to see it still surviving, because there have been other games like Call of Duty, PUBG, and DayZ. There have been so many games that have become really popular. So it's very surprising to me that CS has been able to survive through all that.

With that in mind, why do you think CS survived for so long?

I think the reason CS has been able to survive is because it hasn't changed, fundamentally, it's the same game that it was 25 years ago. And because Valve is so good at keeping the game like that, it allows the ecosystem to grow, and it allows people to become trained at esports and those kinds of things.

They don't change the meta of the game. I played CS2 just like a month ago, and it felt like I was playing CS 1.6. A lot of my skills were still kind of there. I wasn't really as sharp, but I understand the fundamentals. When I play games like CoD: Warzone, the meta is always different when I play after some time. I don't know which gun is good, for example.

From a game dev perspective, are the problems that the community keeps complaining about, like the anti-cheat, the lack of 128-tick servers, to name a few, easy to solve? Nowadays, we have a lot of players calling Valve lazy.

Trust me, I don't think Valve is being lazy. For example, the anti-cheat thing, that's something that we've been trying to fix since 2002 or 2003. That's when they really started paying attention to anti-cheat. And I remember we hired some really smart, talented programmers, and we tried to come up with a lot of different solutions.

But, after all these years, it feels like there's no real, perfect solution for it. There are other games, like VALORANT, for example, that have a very invasive anti-cheat, which involves going through your kernel. A lot of people say 'Oh, that's too much, it's too much invasion of my computer.' And some people even say there are still cheats for that game, even though the cheaters know what they're dealing with.

So, I can sort of understand why Valve is hesitant to implement something similar, because you know, for one thing, that you're not going to stop all of the cheats. There's always going to be some cheats that can get by that system.

So, there's no light at the end of the tunnel?

I feel that Valve and every other company are having a hard time. Name me one multiplayer game that doesn't have a cheating problem. I don't think it exists. The only thing that they can really do is just be constantly aware of it and always ban people.

Other games like PUBG always announce 'Oh, this week we banned many cheaters,' or something like that. So, I don't know, maybe Valve could be more proactive in that sense. It's hard for me to say because I don't really know how Valve does their anti-cheat system, I'm not sure how VAC works.

Valve had a good technical reason for not doing that. But what you want to do is catch as many cheaters and ban them en masse. You don't want to ban them every week.

Some people are thinking that Valve is building a huge AI anti-cheat and that they're just collecting data right now, and once the time comes, they'll flick the switch and ban a lot of cheaters. Is that feasible?

I'm not really that good with AI, but I do know it's possible to train an AI system to kind of identify a cheat. The thing is that the pro players have become so good, that even a human being like myself can't see the difference between a pro and a cheater.

So, I don't think it's possible to come up with an AI system that can 100% identify the difference between a really good player and a hacker. This is a big challenge and is one of the reasons why I'm kind of hesitant to make a PvP game. The cheating epidemic has become so bad that I stopped playing Battlefield, for example. I just gave up because I'd run across a cheater 50% of the time.

Is there an alternative if game developers can't stop people from using cheats?

Well, I don't know if you're aware, but some countries in Asia demand players to give them a government ID, like a driver's license or other sort of ID, to play a game. So, if you're caught cheating, you're banned under that ID, and it's really hard for you to create a new account.

So, cheating in countries like South Korea and China is much harder because people don't want to get banned. It's just very scary. It would be really cool if maybe North America or South America came up with a system where you can have some kind of centralized database and keep track of people's accounts a little bit better.

Well, in CS:GO, you could add a cellphone number to your Prime status. But they got rid of that.

Oh, they don't do that anymore? Now I'm kind of curious because I felt like that was a good system to have, to add some kind of extra form of security. That's kind of why I like FACEIT, because you have to provide some validation. They monitor players' accounts a little bit better, and we're starting to see more organizations like FACEIT becoming more popular.

Because, if I want to play a game, I want to spend my time playing on something that I know also has legitimate people. For me, what these platforms offer is fair. I'd pay $10-20 a month, knowing that I could play with someone who isn't a cheater.

Anti-cheat and the models aside, what else do you think that CS2 lacks at the moment?

One thing I really enjoyed was playing new maps. Back when I was playing CS, we would play a new map like every week or every two weeks. So, I do wish that there were more maps out there. But I guess that's just because, maybe, there aren't enough people making maps or because Valve is very strict about adding them.

It would be cool to have a system where you play community maps a little bit easier, even if they aren't very good. For me, it was really cool to play all these maps because it kind of made the game feel very fresh, even though some of them were really unbalanced.

Would you mind speaking about the Cease & Desist notification that Classic Offensive got from Valve, which led to the mod being cancelled?

Well, from a developer standpoint, I feel really bad for the Classic Offensive team because I can't imagine spending eight years on something and then not being able to release it, and not being able to share it with the community. That's an incredibly hard feeling because it feels like you wasted eight years of your life.

Even if you made a project that sucks, it feels good to just get it out there, and maybe some players would like. Being able to release something is a very good feeling for a developer because you can show people what you created. So, I feel terrible for them that they weren't able to release their project.

This led a lot of people to start hating Valve, because Valve went from pro-mods to preventing a mod from coming out. But, the thing is that we don't fully know why Valve didn't allow it after green-lighting the mod.

I don't really speak with anyone at Valve, so I don't really understand the actual reasoning. But I do suspect that it was never an easy decision. I have the feeling that many people at Valve wanted Classic Offensive, but some people disagreed with it. So, I do believe there was a lot of conflict.

That's probably why they took eight years to make this decision, because they were probably arguing over it for a long time. It just sucks that they took too long to make a decision. It would have been better if they told the CS:CO devs after the second year, you know?

At least they wouldn't have wasted all this time, right?

Yeah, exactly. Anyway, I just feel bad for that team because I do know some of them personally, and they seem like such a talented team. As a fellow developer, it's really hard to watch all this. But, I don't want to make a judgment on Valve because I know they're very private, they don't really tell or explain how they operate, and a lot of people assume things.

When I worked there, I got to see how they operate and all the decision-making. And they always try to do things that are in the best interest for the community, even though it doesn't seem that way. They're very thoughtful of the community, they're not malicious like some other companies. They're very pro-community, even though some decisions they make don't seem that way.

Changing the topic a bit, I saw that you've spoken about it, during or after HLTV Awards 2024, that you've never been invited to CS tournaments? Is this something you resent at all?

No, I don't resent it at all. I think a lot of people just assume that I'm too busy, and to be honest, I'm very busy. I think I was invited to an event once, but I turned it down. So, I think that what happens is that people feel that I'm very busy and hard to reach.

And more broadly, do you think you're recognized for everything you've done for CS?

I think it's fine. I mean, what I made for CS was 20 years ago, so I think Valve has a lot to do with how good CS is today. They were able to kind of just keep it going and continued improving the game. So, I don't really care.

To be honest, the success of CS, doesn't really affect me anymore because I don't really get any money from it. It's nice if people recognize that I worked on CS, but I don't really feel too bad if people don't give me credit.

But, I think you're recognized within the gaming industry, right?

Yeah, I think so. I think I've met a lot of people who said that they became game developers because of CS, and that's always a great feeling. To know that I influenced people to become game developers.

For me, it's very fulfilling to know that people who went on to create some amazing games were motivated by a game they played in the past. I feel really honored to meet these people. And when I was at HLTV Awards, it was just really awesome to meet people who were able to make a career out of CS.

What are some of your favorite teams?

I love to watch FURIA and paiN, and I hope to see them do well in the coming years. It's really cool to see different regions become really good at the game. I always root for underdogs like The MongolZ and the Turkish guys from Aurora. It's cool to watch them succeed, and it would be really cool to watch one of them win a Major.

The MongolZ are so good, every time they play Vitality, they always make it so close, and it always feels like they're going to win. It's great to watch and see those smaller teams finding success.

Who do you think will win the Austin Major?

Oh God, I feel like it's always going to be Vitality to lose because every time I watch them, I feel like 'Oh, they might lose this one,' and then they always have a moment where they just turn it around. It just seems like they don't have a weak spot, everybody on their team is really, really good.

I guess that if you had to pick, the weakest guy would be mezii, but even then, mezii is still very good, right? I think they just have a stacked team, and it's amazing what just adding one guy like ropz was able to turn them around so well.

But also, Falcons always look promising, and they have such a very strong team now. I think they'll get better this year as they become more used to playing with each other.

With this, we wrap up our interview with Gooseman. If you liked this part, you'll also like part one, in which Gooseman talked about the early days of CS and his new PvE game Alpha Response.

Also, stay tuned to Dust2.us as we'll have plenty of interviews coming up during the BLAST.tv Austin Major 2025!