Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a 2012 multiplayer tactical first-person shooter developed by Valve and Hidden Path Entertainment. It is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series. Developed for over two years, Global Offensive was released for OS X, PlayStation 3, Windows, and Xbox 360 in August 2012, and for Linux in 2014. Valve still regularly updates the game, both with smaller balancing patches and larger content additions.

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The game pits two teams, Terrorists and Counter-Terrorists, against each other in different objective-based game modes. The most common game modes involve the Terrorists planting a bomb while Counter-Terrorists attempt to stop them, or Counter-Terrorists attempting to rescue hostages that the Terrorists have captured. There are nine official game modes, all of which have distinct characteristics specific to that mode. The game also has matchmaking support that allows players to play on dedicated Valve servers, in addition to community-hosted servers with custom maps and game modes. A battle-royale game-mode, "Danger Zone", was introduced in late 2018.

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Global Offensive, like prior games in the Counter-Strike series, is an objective-based, multiplayer first-person shooter. Two opposing teams, the Terrorists and the Counter-Terrorists, compete in game modes to repeatedly complete objectives, such as securing a location to plant or defuse a bomb and rescuing or capturing hostages. At the end of each short round, players are rewarded based on individual and team performance with in-game currency to spend on other weapons or utility in subsequent rounds. Winning rounds generally rewards more money than losing does, and completing map-based objectives, including killing enemies, gives additional cash bonuses.

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Global Offensive has nine official game modes: Competitive, Casual, Deathmatch, Arms Race, Demolition, Wingman, Flying Scoutsman, Retakes and Danger Zone. Competitive mode, the primary gameplay experience, pits two teams of five players against each other in a best-of-30 match. When playing Competitive, players have a skill rank based on a Glicko rating system and are paired with and against other players around the same ranking. The Casual and Deathmatch modes are less serious than Competitive mode and do not register friendly fire. Both are primarily used as a practice tool. Arms Race and Demolition, both based on mods for previous iterations in the series, were added alongside eight new maps for the modes. Arms Race is the Global Offensive variant of the "Gun Game" mode in other games in the series. Demolition is another bomb defusal game mode, with gun upgrades only given to players who killed an enemy in the previous round. Wingman is a two-on-two bomb defusal game mode taking place over sixteen rounds. Similar to Competitive, players are paired based on a dynamic skill ranking.

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