Combat Skirmish lets you play Counter-Strike 1.6 online, free, directly in a web browser. There is nothing to download, nothing to install and no account to create.
It runs the real GoldSrc engine compiled to WebAssembly — not a remake or a reimplementation. The aiming, movement, netcode and physics are the original game's, streamed to your browser.
The first load caches the engine in your browser; after that, maps stream on demand. Quick Join drops you onto a live public server, or you can open the Server Browser and pick a specific map, mode or region.
The servers you connect to are real Counter-Strike 1.6 servers run by the wider community. Combat Skirmish is the client that gets you there.
Compete is the exception: ranked 5v5 matchmaking where the match server is one of the ten players' browsers. You queue solo or as a party of up to five, accept a ready check, and play a full MR15 match with a knife round, halftime swap and overtime; ratings start at 1000 and move after every rated match. If the hosting player drops out, the game moves to another player and resumes at the same score.
It also runs in a headset. On a PC with SteamVR or another OpenXR runtime, desktop Chrome can hand the game to your VR headset from the settings menu: motion controllers aim and fire, and the HUD and menus float in front of you. PC VR only for now — standalone Quest Browser and Sven Co-op in VR are still to come.
Combat Skirmish is an independent project. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Valve Corporation. Counter-Strike, Half-Life and GoldSrc are trademarks of Valve Corporation, used here only to describe the game the project runs.
Questions, bug reports, server-operator requests and legal notices all go to [email protected]. See the contact page for what to include.