Hate it all you want, but it's the sole reason Counter-Strike still exists today. Without skins, Valve would have shut the door on the game (and quite possibly the company entirely).
Skins is literally a money printing machine.
Skins is literally a money printing machine.
Skins are also a money machine but it's just false to claim without it Valve would close its doors.
Every other live service manages with non-gambling skins. They have their own problems (usually around FOMO), but nowhere near the literal gambling that is CS.
> Valve would have shut the door on the game
In terms of not having any developers on it, sure, not impossible.
> (and quite possibly the company entirely)
Ahahahaha come on man, even without CS, Valve is one of the most profitable companies of all time.
Most games that are that old, don't survive.
Fortnite is coming onto 8 years old now. The idea of it being around for 5 years longer is not particularly alien.
[0]: https://blog.counter-strike.net/2013/08/7425/
e: Actually, I should really be focusing on the time from Arms Deal to the present, which is 12 years. So, Fortnite has even less time to catch up to CS' current lifespan with gambling.
Did you miss the entire article? CS itself came from a dorm room. You can have excellent games that spawn from creativity instead of monetization.
I was really into the odd maps (NIPPER) and early Internet community around games (joe2). We hosted servers off of unused CPU cycles from oil exploration boxes.
This still exists all over the web, but the creators that figured out economics moved on.