Valve News Network got the chance to sit down with members of the Counter Strike Global Offensive development team during their recent trip to Valve’s offices. During the over 20 minute interview VNN got the chance to talk to dev team members about their opinion on the gambling economy that have sprung up around tournaments and skin. Also brought up is the remake of the map Dust which Valve briefly teased.
The interviewer brought up Valve’s role in providing third parties such as gambling sites with access to Steam’s login platform through Open ID. As members of the development team point out, Valve really doesn’t have an opinion on the use of their login system for such sites as user inventories are publicly available through Steam Profiles without the use of an Open ID sign in. This means that even if Valve were to revoke a site’s access to the platform that would not stop them from facilitating trades between users or gathering inventory information from publicly available pages.
Want to know more about what the CS: Go team has been working on including a remake of the classic map Dust? Watch the video in the embedded player below to find out. Counter Strike GO gambling and skin trading has been at the forefront of e-sports coverage, especially after well-known streamers like TMartin & others were implicated over the whole CSGoLotto scandal and the Washington Gambling Commission seeking an end to CS:GO gambling through legislative means.
Today is the final day for Valve’s annual holiday Steam Sale and that means you have less than 24 hours to save money on some of the biggest games of 2016 as well as an ever expanding catalog of indie titles. It’s time to rifle through your wishlist, search the couch cushions for spare change and make any last minute purchases….. or should you? Here’s some insight into my own personal account.
First here is what Valve has selected to tease store pursuers with today:
Today’s Highlighted Deals
Grand Theft Auto V – $34.99
Counter Strike: Global Offensive – $11.29
H1Z1: King of the Hill – $14.29
Euro Truck Simulator 2 – $5.49
Doom Franchise Up To 60% off
Portal 2
Witcher Franchise 40% off
Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain $32.99
All Prices In CDN
Most of my Steam library is most definitely the result of multiple sales over the course of the last seven years. With over 300 titles it can sometimes feel like there is too much to play, I never thought I could be paralyzed by too much choice but as Alivin Toffers work on Overchoice shows us – sometimes when presented with too many choices an individual can become confused, anxious or dissatisfied as the number of choices increases. When staring at my library I often ask myself “Do I want to venture back into Fallout 4 or replay an old favorite like Unreal Tournament or perhaps a try out one of indie games I picked up cheap?”. It is great to have some of my favorite PC classics at my finger tips but it can also be paralyzing.
While writing this blog post I actually decided to dig into some of my account’s statistics – while I’ve had a Steam account since the day Half Life 2 launched in 2004, I didn’t start collecting games on the platform until 2009 when I built my first gaming rig. My most played titles are either open world RPGs like Fallout 3, Fallout 4 or MMORPGs like Rift Online and Eve Online. Clearly I enjoy being fully immersed an expansive never ending world but that means I’ve also neglected a lot of linear experiences in my library. Apparently I’ve only ever spent an hour or more in 30% of my games, meaning that approximately 245 interactive experiences haven’t even been installed by me in the last half decade.
So what is the solution? Is it to simply stop buying games, creating wishlists and playing titles that I’ve already dedicated my money too? Perhaps to an extent this is correct – I’m sure a lot of the smaller games that I’ve collected over the years like Analogue: A Hate Story could be completed in a single session while other idle time spenders like Cities: Skylines could see more playtime during particularly boring evenings. On the other hand it’s almost impossible to NOT get swept up in the excitement of the winter sale or to eagerly anticipate an upcomming title – I’m counting the days until Gravity Rush 2 and I haven’t even finished Final Fantasy XV yet.
So, I don’t have the solution to the glut of backlog games that I have accumulated over the years. I was gifted a $50 Steam Card over Christmas and of course I spent the entire thing before the holiday sale even ended. Others have come up with some creative solutions – like this one Engagdet writer who keeps a spreadsheet and organizes their unfinished RPGs in order of importance, which helped them finish the original 1998 Fallout. Others, such as one post in this thread on r/Patient Gamers suggested finishing 2 older games before investing the cash in a newer title. Sites like Backloggery can also help you track the progress on uncompleted games!
It is only the second day of 2017 and I am already swamped with games. Here’s hoping I can make that 70% unplayed rate in my Steam library statistics come down by the end of the year, instead of hording more games.
Bethesda’s Fallout 4 is the 2nd most played game on Steam a week after its release with 256,000+ players. This comes after the game broke existing records when it launched last week with 360,000 players – the game went live at midnight on November 11th. Previously RockStar Game’s Grand Theft Auto V held the record for concurrent players with 301,000+ when it was released on PC this past April.
Fallout 4’s numbers are nowhere near the reigning champion, Valve’s DOTA 2, which had 318,000 concurrent players as of press time and a peak today of nearly a million players today! Comparing Fallout 4’s numbers to DOTA 2’s isn’t exactly fair since one game is a single player immersive RPG and the other is a 5 Vs. 5 MOBA.
Rounding out the top ten include PC staples like Valve’s own Counter Strike: Global Offensive and Team Fortress 2. Surprisingly Activision’s latest entry in the Call of Duty franchise, Black Ops III is the last place on the top ten. I would have thought Black Ops III would have been a bit higher but I guess you can’t deny the power of the wastelands.
Get hyped for the World Championship for Counter Strike: Global Offensive which has been set for October 8th 2015! Some of the top CS: Go players from 16 different countries will be traveling to Belgrade to do battle. The CS: Go World Championship is a major event is a joint venture between Hitbox and E-Frag!
More than 79 teams competed In continental finals which took place this past May.
If you’re going to the festivities in Belgrade they will have a small pavilion with other games like League of Legends, Pro Evolution Soccer and HearthStone for attendees to play while they wait around for matches to begin.
If you can’t be there you can always watch their livestream here on the 8th!
Valve has teamed up with a mod team over at PlagueFest, a community site that works on mods for games like Counter-Strike: Source and ArmA II, to create a zombie mod for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. This content will be available on only the PC version of the game (99% sure here), and you won’t have to wait to test it out, because it’ll release on the same day as Global Offensive.
This certainly isn’t the first time that we’ve seen zombies in a first-person shooter. Treyarch’s recent Call of Duty games and ArmA II are the most popular in the market right now. Will Global Offensive be able to match these games? We’ll have to see.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive releases on the PS3, Xbox 360, PC, and Mac on August 21. Check out the game’s official website here.
