MWEB recently announced that they have launched two Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS: GO) beta servers – one each on Cape Town and Johannesburg. This should be good news for SA gamers as Counter-Strike remains a popular title, and CS: GO is inexorably working its way toward an open public beta test period.

We caught up with MWEB’s online gaming manager, Desmond Kurz, to get some more details on the beta server setup, and find out their plans moving forward. We asked what working with Valve entails when trying to bring CS: GO servers to South Africa.

“Luckily for this title, we have a great relationship with the guys from Valve, courtesy of a long history with their products, especially with Counter-Strike. I’m sure there are many gamers that have fond memories of the MWEB’s Counter-Strike servers Kalahari, Namib and Karoo. I would be remiss to mention that we also host two Steam content servers, which also helps the case,” said Kurz.

Kurz highlighted their server equipment setup, saying “There are 2 physical servers, one in Cape Town and one in Johannesburg. However, we are running 6 instances of the gaming server software. Each instance of the gaming server software supports up to 10 players (5v5).”

“Both servers are Dell machines with Twin Xeon X5670’s, 96GB of RAM and plenty of disk storage available. Lots of processing power and lots of ram for a lag free gaming experience,” said Kurz.

As for future plans to expand the CS: GO service, Kurz said “We’ll keep tracking the demand and as there is a lot of processing power available on the physical servers, we have lots of room to scale up with more gaming server instances, should they be required.”

CS: GO is pegged to launch on Windows PC, Mac OS X, Xbox 360 (via XBLA) and PS3 (via PSN), but a release date is of course running on Valve time.

Do you need a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive PC beta key?

If you’re eager to get into the beta test phase and suss out all the best camping spots, but don’t have a beta key, then MWEB GameZone and MyGaming both have some PC keys up for grabs.

Head on over to GameZone to enter their competition – there are 20 keys up for grabs and the competition closes on 20 April.

MWEB GameZone CS: GO beta key give-away

Likewise, head on over to the MyGaming competition forum to enter our CS: GO beta key give-away. Courtesy of MWEB GameZone, we have 3 PC keys up for grabs.

MyGaming CS: GO beta key give-away