Not too long ago, Valve announced that it was looking to change the buying system within CS:S.
It was expected that they would just look at the cost of certain items, and change that around..

Today Valve dropped a huge bombshell on the community announcing a very interesting, and in my view a very flawed new system.
Now it appears nothing has a static price.

From now on, all items are based on “Market Value”. Weekly all items will be automatically looked at Valve will then take the percentage of money spent on each weapon and adjust the price in regards to this. So if a colt is taking up 10% of every dollar spent in CS:S, next week the prices will raise 10%.

This is very likely to see the prices of such items as AK47’s/Colts/AWP’s being pushed sky-high, leaving other guns to be as cheap as chips.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out, I personally feel that this variable system is bound to cause a lot more problems then it solves. This means more updates from valve, which going off previous updates is likely to cause problems especially for people who play at BYOC LANS without internet connections.

Then you need to look at it from a strategic point for teams, now buy rounds will be different from week to week, while this will add tonnes of more choices for captains to decide on what strategies to run, in the past this hasn’t always been the best of things.

Looking at this, I doubt I can see a positive outcome from the change, Counter-Strike players have always liked the status quo, through my whole time playing CS, I cant think of a single patch that has been welcomed. Everyone knows the game and knows how it plays and that’s what makes it such a huge and unique game, and the reason why so many years after release people are still interested in the Counter-Strike genre.

I can see this being another nail in the chest of competitive CS:S

I recommend taking a look at the Valve press release here

The money market here

Post up your thoughts on the changes!