I find it odd there has been very little noise about this. Like sweet its awesome to see that there is a new Counter strike and the features they are adding seem awesome. People were very angry when Blizzard did this same exact thing, where is the anger right now about this?
I’m not here to say Valve should forever support their games, its just seems weird to kill it when there are fundamental differences between the games. Kill the official servers, that is fine since the community will just adjust and host their own servers but basically zapping the game out of existence seems wrong and it continues the worrying trends we have that can revolve around game preservation.
Alright, I see the issue. Even then that’s not technically true. I would say it’s not user friendly, but CS:GO is still counted as a previous version of CS 2, and you can access and host older versions of Valve games. Here’s a guide for that.
Oh word, I didn’t realize that. I’m glad that’s an option.
Note: had to make a Beehaw account but same op because for some reason Kbin was shitting the bed for me since I couldn’t see any comments even though I did get pinged for the notifications.
While you are technically correct, it doesn’t really help. Adding extra barriers of entry and releasing a game that is suppose to be a sequel but just replacing an older version is silly. It just feels wrong to bin the old version instead of just launching a completely new instance. Like I love using steam console and I have been using it a ton especially for beat saber (because pointlessly love to kill all the mods with every update that just basically adding new dlc) but to foster a gaming community we should have lower barrier for entry because people don’t want to faff about with this kind of thing. I don’t know why it was too hard for Valve to keep CS GO at the last version since the easily accessible way of getting it (via the beta tab in properties) is out of date while making a new separate entry for CS2. Like imagine if they did this with CS or CS source. Kill both of them and you are stuck with just CS GO or I guess now CS2.
In principle I agree that it’s preferable to have the old game as a visible download on the store but you should understand that it’s unusual for evolving online games to offer older versions in any manner these days, nevermind let players host games independently. That Valve provides this possibility at all, even if in a convoluted way, already puts them miles above Blizzard.
CS 2 even allows for players to carry over their whole collection of skins, which is something many players care deeply about and even invested significant money on. Which is itself a questionable matter but I can’t deny that this is important for the players. Maybe this is why it was made into a new version of CS:GO rather than a separate thing.
I think it’s fair to demand that old CS:GO is added to Steam in a more transparent form, but it’s a matter of convenience rather than them taking anything away from the players like Blizzard did.
All I’m saying is having a hacky solution is nice but you can’t build communities solely on that. You need methods for the laymen. Imagine if you will they killed Half Life 1 in the same way. You bought a game but they chose to upgrade it for free. You would be stuck with that utter garbage port called Half Life Source. Like sure you can maybe find a workaround via steam console or if you had the disc you can get around it. Its just bad look.
We already heard news that valve may be forced to remove some depots because there were rumors around the times when people were “downgrading” their GTA games because the music licenses were expired and rockstar had to legally remove them (even though that is fucking annoying and sucks). I think we can’t just rely on these outdated depots forever.