I find it odd there has been very little noise about this. Like sweet its awesome to see that there is a new Counter strike and the features they are adding seem awesome. People were very angry when Blizzard did this same exact thing, where is the anger right now about this?
I’m not here to say Valve should forever support their games, its just seems weird to kill it when there are fundamental differences between the games. Kill the official servers, that is fine since the community will just adjust and host their own servers but basically zapping the game out of existence seems wrong and it continues the worrying trends we have that can revolve around game preservation.
In principle I agree that it’s preferable to have the old game as a visible download on the store but you should understand that it’s unusual for evolving online games to offer older versions in any manner these days, nevermind let players host games independently. That Valve provides this possibility at all, even if in a convoluted way, already puts them miles above Blizzard.
CS 2 even allows for players to carry over their whole collection of skins, which is something many players care deeply about and even invested significant money on. Which is itself a questionable matter but I can’t deny that this is important for the players. Maybe this is why it was made into a new version of CS:GO rather than a separate thing.
I think it’s fair to demand that old CS:GO is added to Steam in a more transparent form, but it’s a matter of convenience rather than them taking anything away from the players like Blizzard did.