As someone who has been playing cs long before steam was involved, I think it has helped the community grow due to easier access to other players as well as servers. The best thing about steam is that it allowed for easier server filtering and the addition of favorites as well as being able to keep in touch with other players. The negative aspect of steam is that it often has updates and unnecessary messages for games I don’t even have uploaded or have any interest in. From experience I would say their support is quite slow and steam has been known to have alot of connectivity issues. They now have ads in-game in cs 1.6 which is just shameless advertising that takes takes away from the sense of “being in the game.” Steam has however recently expanded their friends system so that groups can be made and can connect people from all over the world who have similar interests. Hope your paper goes well.
