The rumours about new Valve games, the shutdown of CS 1.6 and the difficult questions of the TV rights are always going around in the community. readmore.de talked with Doug Lombardi, Valve's Director of Marketing, about the struggle between 1.6 and Source, about the future of both games, the TV rights and Team Fortress 2.

readmore.de: Right now we got two big Valve-games in the scene. Would you like to see CS:Source getting bigger in the future? Or are you already one step ahead and think about the development of Team Fortress 2?

Doug Lombardi: I mean for us it's just important to make good games and support all of them. We don't really try to intentionally bring one game into the eSports scene or the other. You are, sort of, selected based on how many people play the game in the general world and not because of the playability of the game. Valve is more concentrating on the features and the fanbase as a whole and then the eSport scene will pick up what the general fanbase is willing to play.

readmore.de: So that’s the end of all fans of 1.6 being afraid of losing their game because of a shutdown of the servers?

Doug Lombardi: You know, it's not something we have ever put out there that we try to stop or kill 1.6. We can very easily say that we won't support 1.6 in a number of ways like turning it off from steam or whatever. If we were actively trying to kill it we would do a better job of shutting it down (laughs). For us it's just putting all the games out there and what ever game people want to play we will promote. We always try to do new stuff like Team Fortress 2.

readmore.de: In the last couple of month there was a lot of discussion about the in-game advertisements. Why did you start that in 1.6? Was it just because of the bigger community at that point?

Doug Lombardi: Well, I mean, it was 1.6 because at the time it was the largest community we had. We started using it as a test that in-game advertisement in games works. If you do any kind of advertisement, you will have the most success based on the viewership. So if ads in games are supposed to work, it's got to work in something the size of 1.6. So it seemed like the natural place to test it. For us we've seen the game continue to grow and continue to drive, so we are okay. We are trying to be really tasteful in placement of the ads and not being intrusive to the gameplay. I think we haven’t seen any problems there. We are not having it added to the other games yet because 1.6 has not sold out yet. It's a trace marking economy kind of thing. We start with the biggest one and if that sells out, you start with the other games.

readmore.de: So you are trying to get the money not directly from the players like MMO companies like Blizzard, but from the interests of the players?

Doug Lombardi: While, I mean for us, we always said that we don’t want to charge the consumer to pay to play. We don't want to charge anybody for an update or new maps. But to build those games requires resources. People have to have salaries and we have to have workspace and new computers and other things. We are always looking on viable ways to make sure that the company is well resourced and everybody is making money to reinvest and that sort of thing. Advertising is something a lot of people are trying out right now. We got the approach from somebody and so we ran the experiment. It's quite a year yet that we started.

readmore.de: How do you see the conflict between the 1.6 and Source community?

Doug Lombardi: I mean, to us it's like two games. 1.6 and Source are related, but they are really different things. There are two different engines and system requirements. And it's great that so many people are playing two of our games. We don’t see as much of a struggle as far as people have options.

readmore.de: What do you think about the CSPromod? Would you like to see another version of Counter-Strike?

Doug Lombardi: I haven't really been following it much. I just met him [Alex Garfield] first time about an hour ago. I don’t know much about it.

readmore.de: Would you like to support a third version of the game?

Doug Lombardi: Again I don’t really know what they trying to do there. We try to support people by having tools out there. So when they want to do modifications to the game, they are welcome to do that.

readmore.de: Right now you started Team Fortress 2. Do you think TF2 will also be played on a competitive level of eSports?

Doug Lombardi: We built the game to be fun and have a lot to adapt to. I think it's a great game to play and we are seeing it work really well. The eSports fan reaction during the beta has been fantastic. Who knows what happens? If any tournament organizers are willing to use it in the next seasons, we would be happy.

readmore.de: In the WCG CS tournament there were some problems about the flashbug and the crouchjump. Is that something that could be fixed in the future? Is Valve still working on some bugs of CS 1.6?

Doug Lombardi: We are always looking on stuff, getting feedback from you folks. We also created different versions of the game for special events. If all folks really want something, we will take a look on it for sure.

readmore.de: Another big issue about 1.6 is TV rights. In the middle of 2007, the CGS announced that they bought the TV rights for 1.6 and Source.

Doug Lombardi: They had the rights to make a show using CS. The game can still be broadcast on TV. If somebody wants to make news coverage about this tournament and wants to do it on TV, the rights are not exclusively held by the CGS.

readmore.de: Would it be still allowed to do a show and cast entire games?

Doug Lombardi: It would depend on the concept of the show. If you are making just a Counter-Strike competitive show: No. I think it’s a pretty limited amount of things. They don't have all rights for all TVs on all Counter-Strike. If you include it in an eSports show it's allowed.

readmore.de: What will happen in the future? The rumours are that you will sell the rights again at the beginning of 2008.

Doug Lombardi: The rights for a Counter-Strike show are just sold for a certain amount of time. I don’t know the dates specifically, but it's not far in the future.

readmore.de: Couldn't it be a problem for the competition between the different broadcasters if you sell the rights to a certain company?

Doug Lombardi: Again you have to think about the tournaments. It's not about the coverage of the tournaments at all. It's saying you want to do a TV show about the game as specific as doing a Counter-Strike show. I don’t see how it hurts the tournaments if you say WCG wants to broadcast their tournaments on TV and having CS as part of the coverage, it would be fine.

readmore.de: So they could show an entire match on TV?

Doug Lombardi: Sure, as long as it is not called a Counter-Strike show. The whole can't be just about Counter-Strike: The name of it, all the spots about it, advertising the show with Counter-Strike etc. A dedicated show about CS is not allowed. If you are presenting more than this one game you could do a show including our games.

readmore.de: But that is really different from how the scene is looking at it right now.

Doug Lombardi: I think there has to be some clarification that needs to be done.

readmore.de: One thing still being in the community is Counter-Strike 2. Are there any ideas of doing a new CS version in the future?

Doug Lombardi: Nothing that I will announce today.

readmore.de: Thank you for the interview.