The best part of owning your own wildly popular digital distribution service must be the freedom to promote your own games in any way you see fit. Before the rise of digital distribution platforms, video game companies were at the mercy of GameStop and other gaming retailers. Now though, a company like Valve Software can make its own rules and decide for instance, that it wants to slash the price of a popular shooter in half to celebrate new features being added to the game.
Earlier this week Valve revealed that Counter-Strike: Global Offensive would now feature support for Valve’s Map Workshop service. Like the larger Steam Workshop, the Map Workshop serves as a social network of sorts, that focuses on video games, their fans and, most importantly the virtual items that they create for said games. As you’d expect, the Map Workshop focuses heavily on maps created by players, and by adding Map Workshop support to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Valve has simultaneously made accessing the thousands of extant user-created maps for the game much, much easier, while also greatly expanding the potential community support for the game. Valve has a long history of supporting its games long after release, and it’s no surprise to then learn that the firm’s fanbase is among the most rabid and devoted in the industry.
You can find full details on what Map Workshop is and how it works at the official Steam website, but the key takeaway here is that Valve has decided to celebrate this addition to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive by reducing the game’s price. Instead of its standard $15 price point, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive can now be downloaded via Steam for only $7.49. This deal runs through this weekend only though, so if you want to score the game at a deep discount be sure to hand over your cash before midnight on February 11.
