By Alexandru Andrei – Posted on Aug 5, 2019 in Gaming, Linux

Steam’s official game servers for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are good enough for most purposes. However, you don’t control them. If you create your own server, you will be able to:

Set your own rules, such as match time, freeze time, max players, friendly fire, and so on. But watch to be sure you don’t break important rules, especially these
Have private matches with your friends.
Organize contests/tournaments.
Play on custom maps

Why Create a Game Server on Linux?

Some of you might be thinking, “Wouldn’t this be easier on Windows, on my own computer even?” Well, first of all, if you host a game on your home computer, that’s usually good enough only for local network games. Most Internet service providers offer decent download quality but not so good for uploads. The server is laggy, jittery, and offers an inconsistent gameplay experience. It’s better to rent a server from a reputable cloud computing provider if you want smooth games.

While most cloud services let you host Windows as the operating system, this is not ideal either. Windows consumes a lot of RAM that you could be using to host your game instead. This leads to increased cost. You also have to pay for a per-hour license, which increases the cost even more. And last but not least, the steps to configure the game server (srcds daemon) itself are pretty much the same on Windows and Linux. This means that it’s not any easier to do this on Microsoft’s operating system than on Linux.

Game Server Requirements

CS:GO game servers are not very demanding, so virtual private servers will do just fine (no need for dedicated). The minimum requirements:

2GB of RAM.
Two virtual cores/CPUs. “Intensive compute” instances might be more responsive. Try normal compute first, then upgrade to intensive if you notice server lag.
At least 40GB of storage space.
Debian as the operating system. You might use other distros, too, if you really want to, but Debian will give you a headache-free experience. Instructions in this article are Debian-specific.
If your VPS provider lets you configure a firewall through their web interface control panel, disable it for this instance.
Configure your instance to use SSH key-based authentication preferably. If you intend to use a password, use a very good one! Most of the time servers are broken into because of weak or very weak passwords. SSH key-based authentication prevents this.
If you don’t already have a Steam account, create one here.

You can get affordable and reliable VPS at either Linode or DigitalOcean.