Counter-Strike co-creator has a sobering explanation for the iconic shooter's continued Steam dominance 25 years in: "People play it just to collect skins and s**t"

Original Counter-Strike co-creator Minh "Gooseman" Le left Valve all the way back in 2006, and in the years since, his views on the legendary FPS series and its historic endurance in the PC market have changed significantly.

The original Half-Life: Counter-Strike launched alllllllll the way back in 2000 - that's 26 years ago for my fellow English majors - and yet, the current version, Counter-Strike 2, is consistently the most played game on Steam, and by a pretty massive margin according to the Steam Charts. GR+ sister publication Edge Magazine pointed this fact out to Gooseman in an interview for issue #418, and he didn't take a lot of credit for helping kickstart such an enormously successful franchise.

"I used to think it was the theme – I still think counter-terrorism is a fascinating theme – but I think people play it just to collect skins and shit," he said.

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"Around beta 5 we were contacted by a competitive league and they were like, 'It would be great if you could change this and change that, and make the game more amenable for competitive play'," he said. "I was like, 'Don't bother me – I'm too busy trying to make the game. I don't have time to make it into an esports game'. I was kind of annoyed with their requests. I didn't pay attention to making Counter-Strike an esports game."