I was thinking today about Valve and Steam and i have one question for SteamGAF.
Why we love Valve (beside sales)?
Their games are filled with microtransactions, last few years they are looking to monetize everything they can, their communication with users is minimal, they are rarely listening community, no SP game since Portal 2 ( if i remember correctly), Sale Meta Games are worse...
Everybody already said it, but I wanted to chime in anyway.
Microtransactions in Valve games (and Steam too) are not only purely cosmetic and optional, and in no way they limit the features of their games or store, but you can actually make money (well, virtual money, but still, usable to buy other games) through them.
Even disregarding Steam cards, I've only spent like 4.50 in game in CS:GO to gain accesso to the latest operation, which basically mean that I have some sort-of-achievements to fulfill and they reward me with stuff I can easily sell on the market to recoup what I spent in the first place. Meanwhile, the operation's maps are free to play for everybody.
Now, this last operation isn't worthy as the previous one, but still, even if I never dropped expensive skins, my CS:GO balance is totally in the black.
Ok, while I was writing you posted this:
For example when you boot CSGO what do you see in your menu? Ads for items you can purchase for real money. And yes they are locking some content behind paywall in CS (remember CS is not F2P) with their Operations. For example Arms Race that i mostly play contains 5-6 maps and that is it. No new maps since launch if i am correct.
You got it wrong!
During operations
every CS:GO player has access to the new maps!
What you pay with the operation pass is, in short, a number of in-game achievements (like: "score 20 kills with a sawed-off in a deathmatch on dust2"; "win 16 rounds in a competitive on train", etc.) that reward you with cases or skins, and some various stats about how you're performing during the operation.
There is no paywall at all that prevent you to play every map in every mode.
