Valve Angry Over Counter-Strike Subway Ads

Gamepocalypse writes "I noticed over on GamePro that Valve is considering legal action over the Subway ads that Engage In-Game Advertising was pumping into Counter-Strike matches. Valve's Doug Lombardi: 'Advertising or any other commercial use of our games requires our written permission.'" I'm unclear on this: Were the ads actually in the game already, or was the company just saying they were going to put the ads in? If the ads were displayed in-game, how was that done without Valve's knowledge? If the ads weren't in the game ... why would you make a public claim like this without clearing it with Valve first? Odd all around.

Comments

ridiculous

[abandonment]

This is ridiculous. There are hundreds of commercial server rental places that have in-game ads splattered all over CS servers and have for years.

Just because it's a non-CS commercial company that's doing this is irrelevant.

When we hosted CS servers a few years ago (pre 1.5 / steam), we were trying to figure out how to do the same thing. Considering how much money running game servers costs, bandwidth-wise, I don't see how Valve really has any say in the matter.

They should be happy to have server-operators willing to host their games, and if the gamers themselves don't care about the in-game ads to help buffer server costs, then so be it.

It's not like there isn't thousands of servers out there for CS anyways - if players don't like it, then market forces will react appropriately - ie players will go to a different server.