In what would be considered an unusual move for most game developers, Valve has temporarily disabled gifting of Counter Strike: Global Offensive during the Steam Summer Sale.
Commenting on Reddit, Valve's Ido Magel provided a statement on why the CS:GO developer isn't letting users give copies of the popular eSports title to other users.
"CS:GO will not be giftable during the sale," writes Magel. "Our goal with sales is to grow the community and historically, during sales, the new users that stick around are mainly the ones that purchase copies for themselves."
Valve choosing to prioritize long-term community growth over short-term profit is an intriguing choice, though Redditors in the thread have noted that it's possible to sell copies of giftable games to third-party resellers like G2A, which has come under fire in recent months for allegedly selling fraudulently obtained game keys.
It's possible then that Valve is as much concerned with the motivations of who is receiving gifted copies of CS:GO as much as they are how long they're sticking with the game.