For the example: even tho it’s true that CSGO used to be a paid game, it had been free for 5 years and before that it was 15$, not 40 or however much was ow.

I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter what the price point was. People paid for these games. The game going "free" isn't a valid justification for being like "its okay this product you paid for is being taken from you."

Would you feel the same about any other product in your life? Why is it justified when that something you paid for being taken from you is "a game."

Cs2 comes with a whole new engine which changes a bunch of things

Yeah, a lot less content than CS:GO and no new content. Seems like they could have let it bake longer before release.

Is it a bad release?

Uh is it? It literally has the 2nd highest concurrent players of any game on steam ever. it made what, 40mil in a few hours. Sure some old players are a little mad, but that is literally unavoidable, and I don't think they are dropping the game, just complaining.

By your own argument, CS2 is worse than Overwatch. CS2 removed over half of the maps, features, and the gameplay is way worse. Overwatch gameplay was pretty similar, although switching to 5v5 has its problems. It ran the same on the same hardware. The biggest change was the economy which doesn't affect gameplay. I feel like I completely lost access to CS, but I played OW2 for months until the gameplay problems with the meta became more apparent.

Funny I consider OW2 a better upgrade than CS2. But maybe because OW1 had a worse starting point. The game needed a total rebalancing and that was what OW2 was about. Yes it's not something they needed a "new" game for but it still made the game 10x more fun for me. CS2 doesn't seem like it's provided any rebalancing at all, feels basically just like a visual update (which OW2 also had). As a super casual player that only played a couple hundred hours years ago, I can't really tell the difference with the new engine (besides smoke mechanics) so the changes feel way less dramatic. But I'm definitely having fun revisiting CS. Also I can see why people would be more mad about OW2 monetization because CSGO has always farmed people for money whereas OW1 gave a ton of free skins. Now they kinda feel like they're at the same level 🫤

Sure, but a fragmented player base impacts Valve's bottom line more than anything else, so I don't understand why this is an argument.

Oh no! A few thousand players will stay on the old game while the new one will still absolutely dominate the charts because people like new and novel.

Genuinely, who would that deeply affect outside of Valve trying to make sure the player base is all on the current game to make the most money? Why are we defending business practices that are clearly aimed at making the most profit at the expense of customer service?

Weren't we all supposed to be Valve fans because we expect better of them?

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It does not work for me. It downloads the update, but still starts CS2. There are no launch options.