Been a fan of Counter Strike 1.6 since the time you had to move down to the basement to play with your opponents? Liked the big leagues, and a fancy reward for your gameplay? ESEA was the place where you would have haunted. You would have played another pick-up game, another scrim, until one day, you wake to see that all the servers are down with a notice up on the main site. Sadly, that is what has happened.
ESEA, the world’s leading matchmaking service, have officially announced that they are downing the shutters on the Counter Strike 1.6 servers. It’s quite a sad story for many a veteran Counter Strike player who was a member of ESEA since the days of 1.6, and who continued to be loyal to the game by adding to its player base.
ESEA made a tweet on their official Twitter account, and the official verdict on the main site was this :
“When ESEA was founded, the only game it supported was Counter-Strike 1.6. Although Counter-Strike had already solidified itself as one of the founders of esports, the growth since its infancy has been staggering. Through all iterations of Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike 1.6 has long been a fan favorite and will go down as one of the best games ever made, period.
In 2014 we officially shut down all CS:S servers, and today we do the same for Counter-Strike 1.6. For many of us Counter-Strike 1.6 has played a large role in our life, from being the basis of lifetime friendships to developing esports legends that many of us still look up to today. It ultimately is what allowed ESEA to be what it is today.
As a token of our appreciation for all of those who have been with us since the start, all current ESEA Premium and Insider members who have previously played a Counter-Strike 1.6 pug, before matchmaking was released, will have a special badge placed on their profile in the near future.
The future is bright for Counter-Strike in esports, and Counter-Strike is here to stay with Global Offensive leading the way. It’s not going anywhere and neither is ESEA. Here’s to another 14 more years, and beyond!”
The announcement was made here :
https://play.esea.net/index.php?s=news&d=comments&id=15037
That marks the end of an era, in competitive Counter Strike history.