TWeaK , 11 months ago

It’s the same thing that they did when CS went from a mod to a standalone game on Steam.

No it isn’t. Valve did not make CS 1.6, CS 1.6 was a user-created mod. Valve did then hire the mod makers to help make the Source engine (just like DICE hired the Desert Combat modders to make Battlefield 2), but Valve had no involvement with CS in its inception, nor its maintenance pre-Source. Hell, both CS 1.6 and CS:Source primarily ran on user servers, so there wasn’t even any significant upkeep costs.

CS 1.6 pre-dates Steam. CS:S was Valve, but both games did not have any servers or infrastructure to manage, beyond a simple exchange server that catalogued everyone’s game servers (also VAC, if the server host enabled it). It’s CS:GO that started having a big back end. Your point is valid, but only for CS:GO.

It’s kind of surprising how so many people in here have the history muddled.