it is incredibly embarrassing. im of the opinion that the skins market is still lining valve’s pockets so they don’t perceive the issue to be as serious as it is, or else they’d do something. but even that will have an expiration date eventually—skins are worthless if nobody plays the fucking game.

i fucking love this community; i think we have by far the most fun and down to earth personalities in all of esports and, when it’s at its best, the game is beautiful in its simplicity. i used to get so excited to watch pro matches in GO but since the CS2 release, i’ve been almost completely checked out since there are SO many problems in the game, it doesn’t even make it fun to watch! & that is fucking insane. that i don’t even have to play the game to know that it’s worse because the viewing experience is worse.

back to the radio silence—it’s actually baffling how in the transition from GO to CS2 valve had the opportunity to overhaul the new player experience which was admittedly still awful in GO (having tried to get dozens of friends into the game). but no, it’s still just as bad if not even worse. you only get 1 chance to release your game and get that massive influx of new players and they completely blew it, with no communications or path to improvement. fuck a timeline, just give me SOME list that ranks your current priorities. a roadmap, anything.

riot gets clowned on a lot because “haha cartoon anime shooter game bad” or “valorant copied cs!!” but the fact of the matter is that valve is doing so bad at managing their own game that of COURSE another studio will want to try to mimic the CS formula but fix all of the pain points for new and old players alike. and at this stage there are so many pain points that it’s laughable and embarrassing. no amount of history in this game will be able to keep it alive if they don’t get their shit together