It is difficult to make major changes to incredibly popular games under the best of circumstances, given that it is almost impossible to please that many people at the same time. Counter Strike: Global Offensive is no exception. With its massive following and incredibly competitive nature due to its esports following, it is a game that players take very seriously.
Today Valve, the developer behind the hit, is facing serious fan backlash for an update to the game’s trading system. In a blog post last week, they detailed some major changes to how often trades would be able to take place. The most divisive of these changes is a new rule that items received from a trade will have a 7 day cool down period before they can be traded again.
Within the post, Valve notes that this particular change is to help combat scams, preventing bots from quickly trading items and keeping them out of the hands of real players. This rule was already in place for items purchased in game or from the Steam Marketplace. However, it seems this particular route for making fast trades had become pretty important to the trading ecosystem within the community itself.
Players were quick to condemn this rule change. Even professional CS:GO players like Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz were speaking out on Twitter shortly after the announcement was made. “The only winner of this update is Valve and the money the market will generate from this,” he said in his post.
The reaction has been so intense, fans have launched petition asking Valve to change the system back to how it was before the update. At the time of this article, that petition had just over 100,000 signatures and was continuing to climb. “This update essentially destroys trading interactions as a whole,” the final line reads, illustrating just how strongly some players feel about this change.
Valve has not yet commented on the petition or the fan backlash.