Guess this is the way the wind’s blowing. Their new slogan?
Evil: it’s not just for EA anymore!
A shining example of why e-mail interviews suck. “Question not answered” speaks volumes in itself.
Awesome. I was just thinking to myself that I don’t see nearly enough ads in a day.
It was actually quite an incisive interview, they asked some great questions. Valve’s answers, when they bothered to answer at all, were basically “suck it.”
Adding ads to a game that was already purchased without them is basically dishonest and reprehensible. Fuck Valve.
Um, Counter-Strike is free.
Don’t you need to own half-life 1 to play it? I know they sold a separate SKU for counter-strike (without the HL1 content) for quite a few years, so tons of people paid good money for the game.
That people paid money for it doesn’t change the fact that it’s free.
It’s part of the HL2 package, and it costs like 20 bucks stand alone. I guess by the same basis, individual parts of all bundles are really free? In gallant-reality?
http://steampowered.com/v/index.php?area=game&AppId=240&
Who cares? It’s more appalling that people are paying money for Garry’s Mod. What about BF2142, did they even put in the ads yet? Did anyone care? Are a small cabal of people bitching to convince us that in-game ads are the anti-christ?
At one time there was a retail version.
I’m not looking forward to ads in games. I hope this doesn’t catch on.
Too late.
I wish they would just come out and say “suck it”. I think I am more annoyed and frustrated by the shitty underhanded answers these jackasses give when asked (my favorite is the fallback “Giving users choice” catch-all) than I am by the ads themselves. Just admit you want more money, don’t try and sell it like it is something that is better for the community because NOBODY BELIEVES THAT and we ALL THINK YOU’RE A FUCKING TOOL for saying it.
When you are in a leading position in the market, then you can AFFORD ethics and you can afford to be a good example for everyone else.
Shame on Valve.
Where is Old Man Murray when we need them to satirize something like this? Oh yeah, those guys work for Valve now.
oops!
Anyway, how is this any worse than the porn sprays and giant anime sig sprays?
AFAIK this is for CS1.6, not CS: S, and I believe you can still get CS1.6 for “free” (other than the Half-Life 1 cost). Having said all of that, Valve has made a fuckton more money off CS than they ever invested into it in the first place and they don’t have bandwidth charges to worry about since the servers are run by third parties. There is absolutely no justification for this other than “BF2142 sold pretty well so we think you’ll just bend over and take it”. I’d respect them a lot more if they just came out and said that instead of dancing around the questions with nonsense answers.
Is it ironic that the incisive and no-holds barred interview about ads in the game had about 30 double-underlined-pop-up-on-mouseover links scattered throughout?
edit: monty beat me to it.
That’s a great but bizarre quote.
Yeah, I just noticed that. Aside from that press release, does anyone really believe that CS 1.6 can be profaned more?