Recently Valve started implementing in game item drops in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, and since the implementation it's become a bit of a controversial topic. There are those who love them and then those who absolutely hate them. And to the latter, I ask them - why? What reason is there to hate what Valve has done with these weapon drops? Because I can give you a number of reasons as to why they're awesome. I should state that I am no stranger to weapon skins and back in 2001, I had an impressive little arsenal of downloaded skins on my local LAN version of Counter-Strike. It was always just something fun and entertaining. So why should you support CS:GO skins? Well, why not? I can totally agree that if one were forced to buy skins to give any kind of advantage in the game, rendering a pay-to-win model, that would suck and I too would strongly oppose it. But with the way it's currently set up, why on earth would you? You may dislike the way the skins look, and that is fair enough - but why complain about it? You're not forced to use the weapon and in fact you're even able to sell it on Steam market. Why would anyone complain about getting something for free that can be sold, is beyond me. Granted since the release of Operation Bravo this past week crate prices have dropped to around $0.20 - but even then, it's $0.20 you didn't have before. And if you get a straight weapon drop, it's also an easy straight sale - if you're lucky you can even get a straight drop that can be sold for over $10.00, and you wouldn't have to pay anything for it. Personally, I have about 20 guns in my inventory - many of which I spent entirely too much money on, by buying crate keys. But that was my decision and I chose to take that gamble. And a gamble it is, if there is any flaw in the weapon drops it's that it should come with some kind of gambling advisory, as I've seen people throw away hundreds of dollars on keys and weapons. But again, that was their decision. I am a huge fan of the crowd funding of professional gaming prize pools through in game items. This is exactly what Valve did with the eSports case drops, where a portion of your $2.50 for the key would go to funding competitive prize pools. The prize pool from this initiative now sits at $250 000, making it one of the largest prize pools in gaming history. All because they simply offered people the chance to get some cool skins. Why would anyone object to large prize pools, something that is essential in keeping a game competitive and played. I think that these weapon drops, if used as crowd funding for comps more, could essential give CS a boost it's been needing for a while. So instead of complaining about your weapon skins, sell them and complain about the effortless money you now have in your Steam account.

I have been playing Counter-Strike since beta 6 and spent several years playing the game competitively both on LAN and online. I fondly recall riding cars around on Jeep2k, the initial addition of new weapons in the beta releases and when lightning bolts used to strike down on you in de_Aztec. The game holds incredible amounts of nostalgic value for me, and helped mould many of my best years. In the year 2000, as a young teenager on 56k internet I began making maps for Counter-Strike in what was then WorldCraft - I spent hundreds of hours self-tutoring and learning. Making maps for LAN use. Needless to say, I have thousands upon thousands of hours vested in Counter-Strike and I am far from being one who believes that the game has been flawless throughout releases. I was skeptical of 1.6 when it came out, because of the then required hardware enhancements (What, actual rain?!). Counter-Strike 1.6 became what is generally considered the best release build made and is still being played today. I won't even talk about CS:CZ. When Source was released I refused to play it, I sided with the 1.6 elitists and continued playing that for a few years. Source just never felt right, it never felt like it was an enhancement of 1.6, instead it felt like I was playing an entirely new game. The hitboxes were awful and the weapons were just too different. This brings us to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. I had been keeping an eye on CS:GO, I had stopped playing 1.6 and was about to give up hope for CS and in turn leave it as a thing of the past. And I kind of did for a while. I never played the beta of CS:GO and it was only a year after the official release that I decided to buy it on Steam and give it a try. I had some spare money in my Steam account and figured why not. I started playing just before skins were introduced and my first impression was that after just a few minutes of play, CS:GO was already leaps better than CS:Source. Those terrible hitboxes changed back to something that feels a lot more like 1.6 and while the model placement felt weird, I noticed that in the menu settings I could change it back to what I had for CS 1.6, placed more to the side and in turn being less obtrusive. I also switched back to the classic static crosshair. I have now played 100 hours of CS:GO in the past month and when I play it feels like it's the good old CS back again, but this time with amazing physics and graphics. For someone who played under 20 hours of Source, it is still a new experience to me to be seeing good graphics with CS. I'm honestly loving CS:GO. The community has its issues occasionally and I do get a bit frustrated with some of the CoD players who have overflowed into CS:GO and with them sometimes bring their 12 year old unwanted opinions onto servers, but that is just online gaming for you. I will address skins in more detail in a future post, but I completely support Valve's case and weapon drop initiative. No one is forced to spend any money on Steam. The skins have no change in play, there is no pay to win model, so those complaining are likely just doing it because they enjoy whining. I will be honest in saying that I wish more local servers would be playing new maps, as after 14 years of Counter-Strike, the same maps are becoming a bit tedious. But that's a server issue and not a Counter-Strike one. Many people got frustrated with Valve's approach to change some of the weapons, making popular weapons weaker or completely nerfing them, as in the case of the Deagle. But when one listens to the reasons they provided for these changes, they made the correct decision. They want users to stop using 3 or 4 weapons for the entire game, we've all seen the USP, the AWP and the AK/M4A1 get frags in competitive play. But now we're seeing some of the other guns doing new things. It offers a new dynamic for the game and brings something fresh. The eSports case initiative recently raised hundreds of thousands of dollars towards a pro-gaming prize pool, something that has really been needed to try and keep CS up there in competitive play. And frankly, I don't care if they monopolize the hell out of skins, so long as it never becomes a pay-to-win model. And in cases where the initiatives are set to fund prize pools, I will gladly support it financially too. I will just end by saying that CS:GO is leaps and bounds better than CS: Source and that I see myself spending hundreds more hours enjoying Global Offensive. I feel like I've been reunited with the game I once loved so.