CS 1.6 Server Hosting on Your Own KVM VPS

Pick Counter-Strike 1.6 as the game of our Game Server, choose a plan and pay. We build the VPS (KVM, NVMe, Ubuntu 24.04 LTS); about six minutes after boot the panel is ready, and the server downloads HLDS from Steam (about 150 MB) and starts. You get:

• A Counter-Strike 1.6 dedicated server: Valve's own HLDS, not a rebuilt engine, named "My CS 1.6 Server", on de_dust2 with 32 slots and VAC secure mode on.
• Pterodactyl, an open-source (MIT) web panel, at an HTTPS address like game-k3x9q2.devoster.app, with a live console, file manager, SFTP on port 2022, two backup slots and schedules. You are its admin and log in with your email and a generated password shown in the Devoster dashboard.
• Port 27015 open on your dedicated IPv4 address, the port CS 1.6 players expect.

The software is free; you pay only the VPS plan, with 10% off yearly. The server comes with full root, free nightly backups kept 3 days plus one snapshot, 1 Gbps with unlimited bandwidth and network-level DDoS protection from the datacenter. Already have a Devoster VPS? You can reinstall it with the Game Server from VPS Control at no charge. Looking for the current game? See CS2 server hosting. Other apps are on the One-Click Apps page.

Counter-Strike is a trademark of Valve Corporation. Devoster is not affiliated with or endorsed by Valve.

Players open the console in Counter-Strike with the ~ key and type connect your-address:27015, using your server's IPv4 address, or add it under Find Servers, Favorites. Every player needs Counter-Strike on Steam: with VAC on, the server only admits Steam players. To keep the server to your friends, set sv_password in cstrike/server.cfg; players then type password yourpassword before connecting.

These are estimates, not guarantees. HLDS itself needs little memory, about 85 MB on an empty server; what costs is the CPU at a high frame rate with a full server, and Micro shares its single vCPU with the panel. The plan's RAM is fixed for the games, with about 768 MB kept for the panel and Ubuntu.

• server.cfg: cstrike/server.cfg holds the server name, rcon_password, sv_password, round times and the rest. Edit it in the file manager or over SFTP; it runs on every map change.
• Maps: the start map and the player slots are fields in the Startup tab. Upload custom maps to cstrike/maps, list your rotation in cstrike/mapcycle.txt, and change map from the console with changelevel de_inferno.
• Plugins: Metamod and AMX Mod X, the classic admin and plugin system, install by uploading them into cstrike/addons and adding Metamod to cstrike/liblist.gam. Admins then go in cstrike/addons/amxmodx/configs/users.ini. They are community projects, not part of the server we install.
• Bans: the server keeps banned IDs and addresses in cstrike/banned.cfg and cstrike/listip.cfg, which already exist.

• Game updates: the server checks Steam for an HLDS update every time it starts. Valve rarely updates CS 1.6 now, but when it does we see the new build on Steam, warn players in the chat, and restart the server five minutes later to install it.
• Daily restart: early each morning, with the same warning, which keeps a long-running server fresh. Change or switch it off in the Schedules tab.
• Backups: two backup slots in the panel, kept on the VPS, so download the ones that matter now and then. Nightly VPS backups (kept 3 days) and your snapshot cover the whole server.
• More servers: ports 27015 to 27024 are reserved for Counter-Strike, so you can add a second CS 1.6 server, for example a deathmatch next to a public server, from the panel's admin area.

The server is in Utah, USA, our only location. Typical round trips are about 23 ms to Los Angeles, 35 ms to Chicago and 47 ms to New York, under about 70 ms across the continental US and Canada; players in Europe will see well over 100 ms. The panel can't send email, because outbound mail is blocked on our VPSes, so create your co-admins' panel accounts in the admin area with a password you give them, then add them from the server's Users tab.

The VPS is unmanaged: you have full root, and the plugins you install and the people you let in are your responsibility.