HLTV, formerly an initialism of Half-Life Television, is a news website and forum which covers professional Counter-Strike 2 esports news, tournaments and statistics. It is one of the leading websites within the Counter-Strike community[3] with over 4 million unique visitors each month.[4] In February 2020, the site was acquired by the sports betting group Better Collective.[1]
History
HLTV's old logo
HLTV was founded in 2002 by Martin "Martin" Rosenbæk[5] and Per "Nomad" Lambæk.[6][7] It was initially created to host recordings of Counter-Strike 1.6 matches, although it grew to include Counter-Strike and Half-Life news.[7] HLTV started storing GOTV demos for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive when they were introduced in 2012. It has since evolved to include news, statistics, and analysis for the professional esports scene of Global Offensive.
Since late 2015, HLTV ranks the teams based on their own rating system.[8][9] HLTV have awarded Most Valuable Player (MVP) medals to the highest performing player at each tournament. They also award Exceptionally Valuable Player (EVP) medals to players putting in an above average performance. In 2016, HLTV launched dust2.dk, a website dedicated to the Counter-Strike scene in Denmark. They followed this up in 2017 by launching dust2.us, a local website for the Americas. Data, such as professional match results, are fed through from the subsidiary websites to HLTV.[10][11] Since 2010 with the first version of Counter-Strike, HLTV has ranked all of the professional Counter-Strike players based on their performance that year. In May 2019, HLTV was officially integrated into Global Offensive, where you can now find professional tournaments, provided by data from HLTV.[12]
HLTV has received many visual updates throughout the years, with the most recent one taking place in 2017.[13]
In 2020, HLTV announced that it and sister site dust2.dk had been acquired by Better Collective, a sports betting group based in Denmark.[1][14][15]
HLTV rating
The HLTV rating is the most widely used rating system in Counter Strike 2, and is often used outside of HLTV.[16][17]
Rating 1.0
Rating 1.0 was introduced to HLTV in 2010 with the first version of Counter-Strike. This rating was based on the number of kills per round, the survival rate of a player per round, and the amount of multikills a player got, which is known as the impact rating. The higher each of these values are, the higher rating a player would get.[18] The HLTV 1.0 rating came under criticism for being too similar to the Kill/Death ratio.[19]
Rating 2.0
Rating 2.0 was introduced to HLTV on June 6, 2017, as an update to Rating 1.0. Added were two new factors, Kill/Assist/Survival/Traded (KAST) and Average Damage per Round (ADR), along with a changed impact rating. KAST measures the percentage of rounds where a player contributes by killing an enemy, assisting a teammate, surviving a round or getting revenge on an enemy for killing a teammate, known as trading. Impact rating is based on the number of multi-kills, opening kills, 1vX situations (clutches) won and other undisclosed factors. Rating 2.0 is meant to be more accurate than Rating 1.0, since it includes more factors to measure the player's performance.[18] Despite these new adjustments, it is still considered by some to not cover enough.[19] Generally speaking, AWPers and so-called "star riflers" are favored by this rating.[20] The sniper generally has a higher K/D ratio due to the nature of the weapon, while the star riflers will be put in the most impactful positions on the map. Meanwhile, the players who set up the star players will generally not be favored by this system. This can be through the form of a sacrificial entry fragger who will be traded or a support player throwing utility from the back.
HLTV MVPs
HLTV awards an MVP medal at notable events, which is given to the player they consider had the most impact in the tournament. Starting in 2016, players who win an MVP award are provided a physical medal which are either gold, silver or bronze depending on the significance of the event which it was awarded.[21]
HLTV Top 20 players
Each year, the HLTV staff rank professional Counter-Strike players based on their performance, and write an article explaining their choice. These rankings are based on how successful the player's team is, the individual performance based on the HLTV Rating 1.0 and Rating 2.0, and MVP/EVP awards given by HLTV. They have ranked both Counter-Strike and Global Offensive players. 2012 was excluded due to it being a transition year between Counter-Strike and Counter-Strike: Source to Global Offensive.[22]
