You can never escape de_dust2, even if you’re not playing Counter-Strike.
Webzen’s free-to-play multiplayer FPS, Arctic Combat, looks familiar. In fact, it looks almost exactly like a certain series of modern warfare-themed shooters from Activision. Call of Duty isn’t the only series it seems to have borrowed from, however – one of its maps appears to be a corridor-for-corridor copy of Counter-Strike’s de_dust2.
Aside from tweaked dimensions and a few shifted crates, the arena is an almost direct copy of the notorious Counter-Strike map, right down to the slight ajar wooden doors (don’t run in front of those) and the dusty, Middle Eastern motif.
Webzen is based in south Korea and is known for its free-to-play shooters and MMOs, including Mu Online, Archlord and the upcoming Huxley. Arctic Combat is currently in an open beta, you can download it here.
Dust and its sequel , Dust 2, were both created by mapper, David Johnston, who was only 16 when he made his first official Counter-Strike map. Inspired by an ancient Team Fortress 2 screenshot, Dust went on to become Counter-Strike’s most popular map. For a time, it held the record as the most-played FPS map in the world, both in terms of concurrent players and time spent on the map. Not bad for an amateur map maker who freely admits he had no idea what he was doing.
Though originally released as a community map, Dust now belongs to Valve. The company has included the map in all of Counter-Strike’s retail releases, including the recent Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve is either very tolerant, or very discreet when it comes to dealing with companies shamelessly nicking their content, so unfortunately we probably won’t be seeing a “Meet the Lawyer” video any time soon.
Source: PC Gamer
