Why Valve never shares anything with the CSGO community

Valve is known for being a very secretive game developer. Although they are somewhat more open-minded than in previous years, Valve has never been willing to have a direct dialogue with its CSGO or Dota 2 community about future updates. Now, the developer is ready to explain the policy “let updates do the talking”.

“We thought CSGO would be better when the team received unfiltered and clear customer feedback,” explains CSGO developer Gautam Babbar. “We read and analyze feedback from articles posted on various player forums. As you know, we rarely participate in these conversations. When the team joined, everyone stopped talking to each other and switched to talking to us, and the response became less clear. Sometimes, Valve also jumps in if the community seems stuck, or we need more information, otherwise Valve just sits out and waits.”

When CSGO gamers speak up, it’s because they’re not satisfied with the current state of the game. So, according to Babbar, the best way to respond is to correct any bugs or issues players may have.

“We avoid talking about future plans for the game, or even how we plan to fix bugs, because future plans can always change – a bug can take more work than the team thinks. or fixing it may lead to unforeseen situations. Community interests also change over time. If we promise a feature or solution that solves a problem, the team will have limited capabilities and be slower to react when the priorities of the game or the community change.”

Babbar said that if Valve makes promises, such as fixing bugs in the game, and takes longer than planned or shifts the focus to a larger issue, the broken promises “starts to lose trust” between developers and CSGO gamer.

“When we make such promises about the future, customers start thinking about the future of the game, not the present of the game. It’s pretty easy to talk about your product when everything is going well. But with any service game, you have to plan for some tough times and CSGO is no exception.

“As a result, we often think about the community strategies Valve will use during those difficult times. Back then, we didn’t think we could make our customers happy just by communicating with them. We have to issue updates and fix bugs. By making customer feedback clear, and avoiding the ‘break a lot of promise’ trap, we’ll be in a better position, be more flexible, and make the best long-term product decisions. .”

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