Counter-Strike in-game ads soon?

IGA Worldwide is announcing Tuesday that it has struck a deal with “Half-Life” developer Valve to provide in-game advertising in “Counter-Strike.” The shoot-em-up online game still generates 5 billion minutes of game play each month. That’s a lot of eyeballs staring at the screen, and advertisers want to reach them.

This is a huge win for Valve, considering the sheer amount of minutes that CSS players rack up. For the player however, I can’t imagine many being happy with such “intrusion”. It may be different if levels are specifically designed in a manner where ads will actually fit in. But none of the current levels would go well with ads, in my opinion. It’s going to be interesting to see how the community reacts to this news.