Valve's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive development team have recently launched a patch that has left their fan community in various states of uproar.
The patch, which was rolled out just yesterday, came with a number of fixes and tweaks for audio and miscellaneous bugs. It also released the R8 Revolver and Negev LMG for competitive matchmaking. Ordinarily this wouldn't be much of an issue, if not for the starting prices of the guns.
For those new to Counter-Strike, no, we're not talking about real money.
In CS:GO matches, players face off over several rounds in a team-based, objective focused game that awards the victor of each round with in-game currency that can then be used to purchase better guns for the next round. Players can also choose to save this money for a later round and often do, for guns are dropped on death and can be stolen by other players.
This type of game design requires a keen balance between weapon pricing and viability in order to keep players trying out different loadouts and strategies. Failing to keep things balanced can result in unfair or downright repetitive gameplay - which may have been the exact result of this latest patch.
This update allows the Negev to be purchased after only one round at $2,000. While the developers stated in their patch notes that this was done in an attempt to "promote experimentation," the introduction of this weapon to competitive matchmaking has many players swearing off the game mode until it is removed.
Still, the price is expected to last only a short time, and Valve will undoubtedly revert it once enough feedback has been submitted. The only question is whether said feedback will be politely constructive... or entirely venomous.
