Ahh, grafitti spray tags. Sprays have been part of most of Half-Life-based games that has seen various uses, from tactical foolery to showing NSFW pictures due to the open nature of its implementation. That includes the good old Counter-Strike.This week Valve just updated CS:GO with good old sprays, with a probably scummy twist.
Sprays are earned through weekly drops by ranking up, or can be bought in “Graffiti Boxes” on the Steam Market. There’s also a “Community Graffiti Box”, a community-made sprays bundle with proceedings going to the community artists that makes it. The ones gained naturally are monochrome (one colour) while the ones bought from the Graffiti Box offers multi-coloured sprays.
The twist here isn’t that you need to buy and earn them, but each spray can be used 50 times. It’s a consumable that can run out, rather than just unlocking a spray pattern. Getting duplicate sprays will just add more uses- 50 by default- to the current spray in your collection.
This shouldn’t be a problem if you don’t care about sprays and willing to support the community. It just feels that CS:GO has been utilised as more of a cash cow rather than the tense, ultra-competitive, e-sports title it supposed to be. Weapon skins have been a problem, as other parties sought to use them as gambling material.
But, at least sprays are back? A quick glance at the Steam Market shows the price for a Graffiti Boxes are RM9.00 (and rising) while the community ones start at RM6.00. So if you intend not to use them, maybe you can make a quick profit by selling them off.