TRIVIA

Some interesting trivia about Counter Strike Online (CSO) or Counter Strike Nexon (CSN) you might not know about!

• The keyword “Nexon” in chat has always been censored in all Counter-Strike Online versions, with the exception of Counter-Strike Nexon.
• Counter-Strike Online originally marketed towards the Asian region since microtransactions were more acceptable back then.
• After the closure of Counter-Strike Online 2 in 2018, several of its characters and weapons were ported to Counter-Strike Online/ Nexon.
• The “Online” in the title is intended to avoid confusion as another official Counter-Strike game released by VALVE Software.
• During a CSO World Championship 2013 event in China, one of the models was seen holding a replica of the Black Dragon Cannon (in-game weapon). Seen at 0:49 in the trailer.
• One of the zombie models has a hidden banner displaying “[2007] NEXON & Valve Corporation. All Rights Reserved”. While the game was officially released in 2008, the beta-testing period started in 2007.
• During its early days, CSO locked access to all weapons except for the knife, USP and Glock 20 pistols, M3 shotgun, MP5 submachine gun, SCAR-L, XM8 and FAMAS assault rifles and the Scout sniper rifle. The rest had to be purchased with either cash or in-game points, and were bound to time-restrictions (30 days, 60 days and 90 days).
• The World Cyber Games 2012 once featured CSO in its game roster to substitute Counter-Strike 1.6. However due to the unpopularity and negative perception from viewers, it did not make any future appearance ever since.
• Contrary to popular belief, CSO/ CSNS reuses the same Source engine from Counter-Strike: Condition Zero.
• Functional doors in certain maps (e.g. Assault) in Zombie PVP modes can be destroyed.

• To date, Counter Strike Online/ Nexon remains the longest standing Counter-Strike spin-off title.
• VALVE licenses the Counter-Strike property to Nexon Corporation and subsequent publishers. Therefore, VALVE’s logo appears in most, if not every official teaser and trailer.
• CSO runs on a Steam back-end user interface. By bringing up the developer console (~ key), the Steam logo appears at the top-left corner.
• Nexon occasionally invites a few famous South Korea celebrities for collaboration. An example is Ye Zi (Ye Ji), a rapper from a five-girl group Fiestar.
• The M134 minigun is the heaviest weapon in-game to date.
• CSO Singapore/ Malaysia once suffered from a major database attack through an SQL injection exploit as the login details were linked to the forums.
• The Studio game mode has been a long-awaited feature as players wanted to create their own maps. It was worked on since early-2016 and finally released in July 2017, making it the longest game mode in development to ever be released.
• The game features a mosque map which has never been released in certain regions due to religious issues.
• As part of the government censorship, the option to disable (gray) blood is unavailable in CSO China.
• Counter Strike Online/ Nexon uses custom mapping based on sky images in South Korea for its skyboxes.
• Counter Strike Nexon originally started off as Counter Strike Nexon: Zombies in 2014 on Steam. In 2019, it was renamed to Counter Strike Nexon: Studio. Then in 2024, it was rebranded to the current title, dropping the “Studio”.