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GI: What about stat tracking and things like that for Counter-Strike? Headshots, how long you’ve logged, etc. Is that something you guys are considering?

Newell: There are a couple of issues there. First of all people in our community are very smart. You can’t lie to them, you can’t kid them, and you certainly can’t f*** them over because there are consequences to doing that. An example of something I think we’ve done really well is the hardware surveys where we ask people “Is it okay for us to look at what your hardware is? And here are the results” I think if they thought we were taking this information for some internal nefarious purpose they’d say no. But instead they say, “Everybody can look at this, and it’s cool.” And hardware companies and operating system companies say, “Wow, you have far more detailed information about people’s PCs than we do because we don’t have this connection to our customers.

Also, the results of Valve’s latest hardware survey have been published. You can check out precisely what the most and least popular types of hardware are for CS and HL players, amongst other details.