Valve recently brought the hammer down on custom Counter-Strike servers that don’t fall within a set of very specific guidelines. It’s a big change to the game’s ecosystem, and many players don’t think it’s for the better.
In a post on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive‘s official site, Valve announced the following rules:
We’re aware that some server operators are offering to their players false inventories and/or profiles as a free or paid service via mods on their servers. These mods inaccurately report the contents of a player’s inventory and/or matchmaking status, devaluing both and potentially creating a confusing experience for players.
Therefore, we are asking server operators to remove any mods and plugins that falsify the contents of a player’s profile or inventory.
To be clear, the services that should not be offered on a community server include (but are not limited to):
— Allowing players to claim temporary ownership of CS:GO items that are not in their inventory (Weapon skins, knives, etc.).
— Providing a falsified competitive skill group and/or profile rank status or scoreboard coin (e.g., Operation Challenge Coins).
— Interfering with systems that allow players to correctly access their own CS:GO inventories, items, or profile.
This means pretty much all server mods that provide players with custom items of any sort (weapons, skins and so on) are not allowed.
For a portion of Counter-Strike‘s player base, this came as a huge shock. It’s a move that stands to eliminate the possibility of more outlandish gametypes, given that players must now operate strictly within the confines of what Valve’s accepted into Counter-Strike. While the game does have a Steam Workshop, it’s only for maps. Players can contribute custom weapon skins to the game (which are accepted or refused at Valve’s discretion), but non-cosmetic changes are a no-no.
As many players have pointed out, the original Counter-Strike was born of a mod that completely overhauled a pre-existing (albeit single-player) game, Half-Life. Meanwhile, Counter-Strike 1.6 and Counter-Strike: Source gave birth to popular overhauls like the Zombie Mod. Even in these dystopic modern futuretimes, Valve’s own DOTA 2 has robust built-in support for custom gametypes. Counter-Strike players feel like they’re getting the shortest possible end of the stick.
Of course, DOTA 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive are very different games built on very different infrastructures, so it’s doubtful that John Q Steamsman could walk down a hall and flip a switch (or twist a… never mind) to make it all squaresies. On top of that, DOTA 2‘s mod system is hardly the Wild West scenario a lot of CSGO players seem to be hearkening back to.
Still, I can’t help but sympathise with CSGO players. While some of these custom servers were likely shady money-making operations or, as Valve said, mindless destroyers of the in-game economy, limits this strict are a bummer. There’s a looming implication of, “Sure, you can try to make a crazy custom gametype, but you can only do so much and you might be breaking the rules and you know what, I just wouldn’t risk it if I were you.” It feels like Valve would have been better off creating a separate ecosystem for these types of things, rather than marking them as off-limits altogether. Here’s hoping they take a look at all this, um, impassioned feedback and decide to sort out a better solution.
Comments
3 responses to “Counter-Strike Players Think Valve’s Strict New Mod Rules Go Too Far”
Sounds more like a move to eliminate what are essentially hacks (having access to items you shouldn’t and lowering your skill value to fulfill the player’s ego by letting them play against lower skilled players) employed at the server host level.
I doubt there’s anything stopping people making a true mod.
Also Half-Life was not single player only; it always featured multiplayer.
Article needs to be updated to reflect a change in the source.
The following section of Valve’s statement has been crossed out.
Therefore, Grayson’s statement needs to be amended where it is said:
As a result, the remainder of supposition in the article may not hold water.
This is an obvious move for valve. There’s a large portion of the community playing on non-valve matchmaking servers, for surf/retake/jailbreak/bhop maps. These players don’t make valve any money if the server runs a mod to allow them access to all the weapon skins currently in the game. As fun as it is being able to try out the different weapon skins i can never afford, I can see why valve would feel like they’re losing money on this one.
The annoying part is some skins you might want to use are not available in game, and there should be a way to use them on your own server. E.g. non-case skins, skins on the workshop which are not approved to be used in cases. This would never happen though as there would be skin knock-offs up on the workshop of every favorite skin in no time.