"Counter Strike: Global" Offensive is set to officially launch in China on April 18, thanks to the partnership of Valve and Perfect World.
Although "Counter Strike: Global Offensive" has technically been in China for a while now, the official release will offer players full distribution and support including official dedicated servers to play and potentially translation, but this is yet to be confirmed.
According to Reddit user TyroPyro, Chinese "Counter Strike: Global Offensive" will feature 128 tick community servers, 64 tick matchmaking servers, and a sophisticated anti-cheating system. In fact, when a player is banned, the ban will be linked to their Alipay account as well as their official personal identification number. That being said, if players attempt to avoid a ban by getting a new "Counter Strike: Global Offensive" account, they will find their PIN entirely banned as well. In short, once a player is banned, he or she will not be able to play until it is officially lifted, Yahoo News reported.
Valve has already established a stronghold in Asia with "Dota 2"; nevertheless, it still faces tough competition with Crossfire, which apparently has dominated Asia for years. "The game has a large audience on PC which has grown on mobile," Daniel Ahmad, an analyst at Niko Partners, told PC Games. "Crossfire will receive a sequel and a movie soon."
Ahmad also thinks that interest on "Counter Strike: Global Offensive" will increase and a new batch of players will start to discover the game. "However, viewership and talent is still missing. With the release this month, Perfect World will be bringing back Counter Strike into the spotlight and aiming to bring in both a new and nostalgic audience, grow the eSports, and compete with the behemoth that is Crossfire."
On Tuesday, the "Counter Strike: Global Offensive" China page started a countdown, which many believed would end with the game's China support launch. But it was instead a countdown to the announcement.