Friday 24 June 2016

Valve Won't Let You Buy and Gift Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in the Steam Sale, Here's Why

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of the many games that has been heavily discounted as part of the Steam Sale. However, users of Valve's digital platform have discovered it is not possible to buy the game and send it to someone else as a gift, as other games are.

According to Valve's Ido Magal, this feature has been disabled for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive in order to grow its community.

"CS:GO will not be giftable during the sale. Our goal with sales is to grow the community and historically, during sales, the new users that stick around are mainly the ones that purchase copies for themselves," Magal said on the game's Subreddit.

The explanation rings somewhat false, considering buying a game and sending it to someone else is also an effective way of bringing in new players.

As members of the Subreddit have noted, the move could instead be to prevent third-party retailers from exploiting the system. Some online retailers often sell digital PC games for much cheaper than they're available for on platforms such as Steam. This is achieved by buying them through sales such as these, gifting them to email accounts outside of Valve's ecosystem, then reselling them later on.

This year's Steam sale has been dubbed the Summer Picnic Sale. Deals are on offer until July 4 at 10 AM PDT. As of yet, there doesn't appear to be any special mini-game or other activity to take part in, as has been the case with previous sales.

There are, however, free trading cards to be obtained by browsing your discovery queue. You can get up to three per day by doing so, and these cards will only be available during the sale.

Another change from previous sales is the lack of rotating flash deals. Instead of regularly swapping in new deals, there will be a select few highlighted each day.



from GameSpot http://www.gamespot.com/articles/valve-wont-let-you-buy-and-gift-counter-strike-glo/1100-6441211/

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