It's really funny. They took a system that was essentially free to them (player run servers and moderation) and replaced them with expensive, in house run servers, such that if your game is more popular than you expected, everyone has a miserable time because your infra dies.
But they """had""" to, because they want to sell cosmetics and "microtransactions", nevermind that a digital costume that costs as much as a candybar or soda shouldn't be called a "micro" transaction.
You can't sell anything if you give away the authoritative server software. Valve tried to get around this by having third party servers contact an official server with a "who actually owns what" style api but nobody gives a fuck.
Ah man, it's almost like a costume that took your character artist a week to put together when they would have otherwise been sitting on their hands shouldn't cost $5
But they """had""" to, because they want to sell cosmetics and "microtransactions", nevermind that a digital costume that costs as much as a candybar or soda shouldn't be called a "micro" transaction.
You can't sell anything if you give away the authoritative server software. Valve tried to get around this by having third party servers contact an official server with a "who actually owns what" style api but nobody gives a fuck.
Ah man, it's almost like a costume that took your character artist a week to put together when they would have otherwise been sitting on their hands shouldn't cost $5