We’ve got a twofer for you in the Unexpected Happenings department today: 1) You can’t buy Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as a gift during the Steam Summer Sale, and 2) Valve actually explained their actions. Quickly!
Earlier today, confused CSGO players began reporting that they couldn’t buy the game as a gift for friends. Valve’s Ido Magal explained on Reddit:
“CS:GO will not be giftable during the sale. Our goal with sales is to grow the community and historically, during sales, the new users that stick around are mainly the ones that purchase copies for themselves.”
That makes sense, but some players think that’s not the whole story. Disabling gifting on cheap copies of CSGO (currently the game is 50 percent off) has a handy side effect of making things tough on resellers who’d otherwise snatch up copies now and sell them for more money later. Cheaters, who might buy cheap copies so they can cheat again, and smurfs also stand to be impacted.
Kinda sucks that legit players got caught in the crossfire, though. Now what will you buy your cool grandma for Fourth of July?
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