In an interview with CS Nation, Valve Software has confirmed that in-game ads will be coming to Counterstrike 1.6 in the near future. Faced with often hostile questions from the interviewer, Valve’s Doug Lombardi refused point-blank to answer some of them, but did reveal the essence of the company’s plans. These are :

“to put ads in a few different places. There will be some ads posted on walls in the game world, an ad on the scoreboard screen, and one in the letterboxed area of Spectator mode.”

Valve views the initiative as a pilot program and may extend it to other titles in future. It claims the ads may ultimately benefit the community by bringing mod developers a revenue stream they wouldn’t otherwise have, thus allowing more ambitious development projects to be funded.

It would be an understatement to say that the Counterstrike community is less than thrilled at the prospect of in-game advertisements appearing. Indignation focuses particularly on the fact that Counterstrike 1.6 was released three years ago so that, unlike more recent games where in-game ads were present from the beginning, this change is being applied retrospectively, long after the initial purchase decision was made. It does indeed raise the serious issue of whether a company has the legal or moral right to make post-purchase updates to a product which may in fact impair the enjoyment of the consumer.

Lombardi promised that Valve would take community feedback into account in judging the success of the program so it appears there is still an opportunity for the player’s voice to be heard.