If you’re among the legions of Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 players who’ve ever wondered why those games have historically gotten much smaller updates than other games owned by Valve, you can at least take comfort in knowing that a veteran of the studio who left back in 2017 was equally perplexed.
Chet Faliszek, who was a Valve writer from 2004 to 2017 and worked on Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead, for which he was co-project lead, says in a new video that the teams dedicated to working on Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 were often pleasantly surprised by player response to meager updates when other Valve games were getting much more substantial expansions. In the video, Faliszek is responding to a question about “how small updates are” for Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 specifically, and he shares this little insight:
“Even at Valve, we’d be like, ‘I can’t believe we get away with this’,” says Faliszek. “Like, we’re not getting away with it like we’re trying to hoodwink you, but these other teams have a thousand people working on a gajillion different things and all these different features, and Valve’s like, ‘here’s five skins,” he adds, sarcastically giving two thumbs up for emphasis.
“And people are like, ‘cool’,” he says, laughing with an expression of incredulity. “So, even people at Valve have an understanding that they’re just lucky.”
Faliszek is known for his candid insights into life at Valve in the 13 years he was there, but obviously it’s worth pointing out that 2017, the year he left, is now nine years in the rear view. For context, Counter-Strike 2 launched in 2023, which means he’s probably referring to CS:GO in the above video. I say that just to emphasize that things can change a lot in that amount of time with internal teams and a the top levels of companies, although Valve’s core leadership hasn’t changed a whole lot since then. Still, it’s fascinating to think Valve was dropping breadcrumbs on Counter-Strike and Team Fortress 2 players and watching in disbelief as they gobbled them up.