Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is one of Valve's biggest money makers, despite its relatively low price. In fact, it's arguable that the price for the game serves more as a way to stop the game from being overrun from cheaters, as the money the game makes comes largely from skin sales and the market. The overall impact of the market, beyond making Valve rich, is still being discovered and is running into regulations as we see attempts to come to terms with it, and other companies consider it.

It then may come as no surprise, that when Valve decided to implement another feature from past Counter-Strike games that they opted to set it up for the marketplace. Graffiti has been in past Counter-Strike games and it lets the player mark the map and leave a feeling on it with the spray can. Thus, when implementing it here they have put it in its own crates, made it something that can be earned for ranking up potentially, and invited the community to make their own takes with the community graffiti boxes that the artists earn money on.

What no one was really expecting, was that the graffiti wouldn't be a permanent purchase. Unlike other things, the graffiti purchases only grant you 50 charges of the pattern to be applied. There are some limits in where you can apply it as well, based on the pattern, and that you can only do so every 45 seconds or round change - whichever is shorter. Additionally, that graffiti you've spent potentially money on only lasts for 7 minutes, with it slowly degrading during that time period. That is only a portion of a match of Counter Strike: Global Offensive making it even more ephemeral.

Making it perhaps worse, is that according to the FAQ the graffiti you earn from rank ups will not be drawing on the whole collection. Instead, rank up drops can only get you monochrome (one color) patterns, and multi-colored ones you can only get by purchasing (or trading) for graffiti boxes.

What is your take on Valve reintroducing graffiti as a microtransaction? Could this type of update seep into Valve's other games? Was Overwatch's implementation of tag to blame for this change of heart? Let us know in the comments below!