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It at it’s worst in my opinion with streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. They’re all starting to get so fragmented that they’re not much better than just paying for cable anymore, and that was their whole appeal to begin with. Now you have to sub to like 3 or 4 different services to get all the content you want (sometimes more) and they all seem to be phasing out their ad free tiers. It’s like they forgot what made them so popular to begin with.
“We think there is a fundamental misconception about piracy. Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem. If a pirate offers a product anywhere in the world, 24 x 7, purchasable from the convenience of your personal computer, and the legal provider says the product is region-locked, will come to your country 3 months after the US release, and can only be purchased at a brick and mortar store, then the pirate’s service is more valuable.”
Gabe Newell
If enough people cry out for an easier way to access CS:GO then I would not be surprised in the slightest if valve heard them and did something about it. They’re pretty good about listening to their community and that’s more than I can say for Blizzard. That tends to be why people are less harsh when they screw up because they don’t have a history of screwing up and they tend to fix them too
You’re not really wrong that people think “Blizzard bad, Valve good” but they’re kinda right in a way. Valve have a much better track record when it comes to not screwing over their customers compared to someone like blizzard (or EA, or Ubisoft, etc). Screwing up OW2 was one more grievance on top of a mountain of them and there’s no hope that the community will get what they want. Valve on the other hand has shown they actually give a shit about their fans and are willing to listen (an example being how so many user requested features have been added to the steam deck remarkable fast). Valve is one of the few major companies left in the AAA space that seem to have any soul left, everyone else seems to have succumbed to corporate greed. So yeah, people might react less harshly when they do something like they just did. Honestly tho, if people are really upset about it, I don’t doubt that valve will here it and do something about it, it’s much more likely that Blizzard bringing back OW1
Fair points I suppose. Tho I think the real game changer here is that CS:GO is still available, while the original OW is not, thus making all other points moot. If I don’t think that CS2 deserved to be a full on sequel instead of an update and would rather keep playing CS:GO, nothing is stopping me. I think that’s why Valve “got away with it” as you put it. They haven’t forced the new changes on anyone like Blizzard did. Players still have a choice. Whether or not it deserves to be a sequel is meaningless when the previous game is still available for free.
OW2 PvE was 100% originally going to be free, then they cancelled it outright and only brought it back when the community spoke up about it, but now for a price. But yeah, as far as I’m aware CS:GO is still available so unlike OW2, you don’t like the new one, you don’t have to play it, you still habe options. Another commenter posted the how to if that’s something you’re interested in.
edit: also as far as I’m aware, Dota 2’s engine update was just a graphical update, they didn’t change anything fundamental to the game. As I said before the difference between CS:GO or CS2 is night and day, they changed a lot.
Edit 2: also I think it’s a little disingenuous to imply that the quality of a game mode that people now have to pay for doesn’t matter
OW2 changed the number of players on a team, rebalance some heros and changes some day maps to night and some night maps to day, nothing that couldn’t have just been a big update. The only justification for a whole new game was the free PvE mode, which they walked back on and is no longer free. Not to mention that people who’ve had hands on with it are saying it’s not even very good. CS2 on the other hand is on an entirely new engine with significant upgrades across the board, both in the technical aspect and graphical. I played some just last night and the difference between 2 and GO are night and day, no way it could have just been an update. Also it’s been brought to my attention that, unlike what I previously thought, CS:GO is indeed still available to run community servers on, unlike the original OW which is lost completely to the world.
Because with Overwatch 2, the changes were so small and meaningless that it could have just been an update to the original game. CS2 is on a whole new engine and has significant upgrades that couldn’t have been implemented in a simple update. Not to mention all the promised features OW2 was supposed to have that they backtracked on. That being said, I don’t exactly agree that they should have outright replaced CS:GO, but it’s not really the same as what Blizzard did. If they had replaced the original OW but had a significant reason to do so like Valve did, people wouldn’t be so upset at them.
Truly the end of an era