Crispy
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- Joined
- Dec 19, 2004
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Tbh I think the main present issue I take with this is that people who bought the game originally (regardless of whether it was rolled into a bundle or sold separately) bought the game in good faith. Now it seems their product is gonna be infested with adverts. Valve should have the decency to disclose information on advertising policy within their games at the time of purchase (I'm hoping they do this for ALL future titles in the interest of consumer relations) or else offer refunds for people who object to having ads stealthed into their game experience.
Next up is the issue of servers having to compete with Valve for ads that help generate the money that keep the servers running. Surely Valve will have their marketing boys whore up all the 'pride of place' wallspaces for their own syndicated adverts, leaving the servers with two choices:
- Further clog up the walls of Dust, Aztec and Office with yet more ads, and ads that will not be in prime locations and therefore will generate less server upkeep than previously
- Go back to the old scenario of wholly self-funded servers, meaning less people will be able to finance servers and ending up with less servers in general for the CS community. GG Valve.
Then there's the issue that, as has been mentioned, this is not only a beta for ads in CS 1.6, but in Valve games period. I can fully foresee these adverts becoming more and more widespread in online multiplayer games and also developing from static images to moving GIF-style images that really distract you from the game. It's all a question of where Valve's allegiances lie at the moment, and considering they seem to have conducted no fullscale opinion poll whatsoever in this matter before forcing ads upon people who did not buy a game with adverts in it, I'm very dubious to say the least about how far they'll bend over for their financiers once advertising has become fully engrained in Valve's production costs model.
For anyone interested, apparently there's a big interview with Gabe Newell in this month's Edge magazine (in the UK) where he talks about where he sees the benefits of in-game advertising lie for Valve. May be worth a read.
Next up is the issue of servers having to compete with Valve for ads that help generate the money that keep the servers running. Surely Valve will have their marketing boys whore up all the 'pride of place' wallspaces for their own syndicated adverts, leaving the servers with two choices:
- Further clog up the walls of Dust, Aztec and Office with yet more ads, and ads that will not be in prime locations and therefore will generate less server upkeep than previously
- Go back to the old scenario of wholly self-funded servers, meaning less people will be able to finance servers and ending up with less servers in general for the CS community. GG Valve.
Then there's the issue that, as has been mentioned, this is not only a beta for ads in CS 1.6, but in Valve games period. I can fully foresee these adverts becoming more and more widespread in online multiplayer games and also developing from static images to moving GIF-style images that really distract you from the game. It's all a question of where Valve's allegiances lie at the moment, and considering they seem to have conducted no fullscale opinion poll whatsoever in this matter before forcing ads upon people who did not buy a game with adverts in it, I'm very dubious to say the least about how far they'll bend over for their financiers once advertising has become fully engrained in Valve's production costs model.
For anyone interested, apparently there's a big interview with Gabe Newell in this month's Edge magazine (in the UK) where he talks about where he sees the benefits of in-game advertising lie for Valve. May be worth a read.
