Recent coverage of ads within Counter-Strike games has brought the issue to Valve's attention. In a bit of investigative reporting, Mr. Remo of Shacknews e-mailed Doug Lombardi and received the following response:
Does a for-profit Valve have a real reason to force community servers to be non-commercial? Those community servers, after all, are free to play on, but aren't free to run.
At no time did Valve grant permission nor discuss these advertisements with Engage. As such, this is now a legal matter. Advertising or any other commercial use of our games requires our written permission.This should clear up any speculation as to whether or not Valve had a hand in this advertising program. More than that, though, Valve sounds very heavy-handed in the e-mail. They clearly want the ad program to disappear.
Does a for-profit Valve have a real reason to force community servers to be non-commercial? Those community servers, after all, are free to play on, but aren't free to run.
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