CS-Nation

Covering the future of Counter-Strike
advertisements coming to cs
CS-Nation: What in-game advertising company is Valve partnering with in this venture?
Doug Lombardi: IGA will be the company selling the advertising space. Anyone interested in placing ads in Counter-Strike 1.6 should contact them.
CS-Nation: Many gamers who play CS 1.6 purchased the retail version. CS: Source was sold as part of the Half-Life 2 package. How do you think gamers who purchase your products will react to in-game ads?
Doug Lombardi: We believe that gamers are going to expect and accept well-done advertising in games. We want to make sure that advertising does not detract from the game experience, so it is our hope that first time Counter-Strike purchasers will consider it simply as part of the game world.
CS-Nation: The community for CS 1.6 simply wouldn't exist without the thousands of free game servers that are ran around the clock. These servers obviously cost money in terms of hardware and bandwidth. Are server operators expected to subsidize advertising campaigns?
Doug Lombardi: The ads will create no additional costs (bandwidth or otherwise) for server admins.
CS-Nation: In-game ads in CS 1.6 would be the largest change to the game in years. Is it fair for Valve to stream revenue from a practically unsupported title?
Doug Lombardi: We think that gamers would for the most part agree that Valve has supported Counter-Strike very well over the past number of years. Compared to any similar game, it has received an enormous amount of attention and ongoing development. Advertising is something we’re trying in order to learn whether or not it makes sense for us and for the community.
CS-Nation: While Steam's ability to dole out updates such as new maps or episodic content is unquestionably useful, some gamers are also cynical about some of the updates that Steam streams to their computer. Counter-Strike was first released over seven years ago, and 1.6 was released three years ago — is it reasonable to add such a controversial feature so long after the game "shipped"? Shouldn't gamers be able to factor in-game advertising in their decision to purchase a product?

(Question un-answered)

CS-Nation: How do you address advertisements that don't fit into the atmosphere or environment of the game? For example, it probably wouldn't make much sense to see an ad for Listerine in the middle of Dust2.
Doug Lombardi: Counter-Strike levels aren’t going to turn into Times Square or a Nextel Cup racecar. We have control over what ads show up in Counter-Strike and how they are presented. So, we’ll work with advertisers to figure out what kinds of things the Counter-Strike audience will be interested in and present them in a way that blends well with the game experience.

Any player who has spent a lot of time on Dust2 will already be familiar with what advertising will look like in the game world. Take a look at the Gamehelper.com logos on the walls that have been there since the map was first shipped.