Still, Squad has dedicated servers for new players, and can be a fun experience for newcomers trying their hands at military combat sims. Like many of the listed games, patience is key, and players will probably have to put up with a few toxic people on their path to learning the g

When it comes to games that have a history of consistency and familiarity, very few can match what Counter-Strike: Global Offensive brings to the table. When it was released back in 2012, CS:GO was the game to be brought the player bases of Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source together. While it mostly succeeded in this endeavor, it wasn't without gowning pains. Thankfully much of that is in the past, so nowadays most players look forward to the future of the g

With his Twitch career falling to the wayside as a result, it is estimated that ItsSliker stole close to $200,000 from people within the Twitch community, sparking a huge flurry of debates surrounding the state of Twitch gambling and how it is ruining the platform. In the wake of these revelations, extremely influential streamers such as Pokimane took to Twitter to demand that Twitch ban gambling on the platform, with her tweet receiving over 300,000 li

Websites quickly began exploiting the craze surrounding Counter Strike 's in-game items, with sites like CSGO Lotto allowing players to trade their items for eligibility into raffles for extremely valuable prizes. Many streamers began promoting these kinds of websites, often without disclosing their financial stakes in the services they were promoting. For example, popular streamer Phantoml0rd was famously permanently banned from Twitch for just this reason, despite later winning a civil suit against the platform. Twitch would quickly go on to ban these kinds of raffle or gambling websites related to CSGO , marking one of the first major gambling controversies for the serv

The newest installment in SNK's long-running 2D fighter, The King of Fighters XV was met with a warm reception from fans of the series. Like many of the games before it though, KoF XV is very hard for newcomers. It doesn't have as big of a player base as Tekken or Super Smash Bros, and thus newcomers will probably be facing players much better than them more frequen

Platforms: PC , Android

Think of CrossFire as Counter-Strike but with less emphasis on repetitive maps and technical gameplay, and try this site time with a lot of emphasis on action and sheer speed . Despite its 2007 release, CrossFire retains quite a large fanbase today, which is testament to its replayable content. Given its age, it evidently has dated graphics. However, the game does shine in terms of character and gun customization, as well as speed-oriented gameplay reminiscent of classic

Gambling services such as Stake.com have risen dramatically in popularity and spending power in recent years, allowing players to gamble with the cryptocurrency of their choice. This popularity allowed crypto gambling services to offer extremely lucrative sponsorship deals for big-time streamers to gamble on their websites. For example, popular streamer Adin Ross was reportedly being paid upwards of $900,000 a week to play on Stake.com, meaning a glaring and massive vested interest was pres

Counter Strike: Global Offensive has often been a source of gambling-related controversy, and so it is no wonder that this inevitably translated over to the Twitch platform. CSGO's case unboxing system provides a small opportunity for players to possibly receive items worth huge amounts of real-world money and was one of the first titles to really spark widespread discourse surrounding this kind of "soft gambling" that was going unchecked within the video game indus

Originally released in 2012, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has built a massive Esports scene and has thousands of players online at any given time. For better or worse, it defined the childhoods of many modern gamers. Players cannot aim down sights, and the guns have set spray patterns rather than varying degrees of recoil. This creates a noticeable skill gap between newcomers and veterans, but what's worse is the commun

Platforms: PC

Players familiar with the classic Counter-Strike formula will appreciate Valorant for its unique hero shooter spin. Valorant pins squads of heroes against each other in a futuristic narrative where the light itself becomes weaponized - alongside a wide variety of technological advanceme

As the newest map to be introduced into the active pool, Anubis has had some controversy upon its inclusion, to say the least. Designed by Roald, jakuza, and jd40, the map was first added to the game on March 31, 2020, to the Scrimmage mode before eventually being moved to Competitive 10 days later. This is notable as it was only the second map to be added to Competitive via this method as before this Cache was the only one to make it. Given this fact, there seemed to be a lot of positive feedback for the map since Cache is a very well-loved