Warum Cyber Cafes and Condition Zero Besitzer nur in den Betatest kommen und nicht jederman
Erik Johnson's comment
When we were working through planning out how to handle the release of Counter-Strike: Source beta 1, one of the problems we had to solve was to somehow limit the scope of the release. Sure, part of our motivation has to do with publicity for the product, but our primary intention here is to find out what is going to happen when the community at large starts playing the released game.
We're always working on ways for our Cyber Cafe partners to attract customers to their business, and they also represent a group that fits our initial scope constraint really well.
Expanding the beta after that to Condition Zero owners also fits into the beta scope really well, as well as giving something back to a group of our most recent customers. It wouldn't be true to say that we didn't think this would have some impact of sales of that product, but that really isn't what's driving how we're managing the beta.
Anyway, it wouldn't be fair if everyone gets to make the claim, years down the road, "I've been playing CS: Source since Beta 1, and it was much better back then."
Erik
