CS-Nation has posted an interview with Valve's Doug Lombardi, asking him about Valve's plans to introduce advertising to Counter-Strike 1.6 early next year. Ads will be on walls in levels, the scoreboard, and the letterboxed area of Spectator mode though Lombardi notes "levels aren't going to turn into Times Square or a Nextel Cup racecar". There are no plans for ads in Counter-Strike: Source for now.

CS-Nation: Any change to the basic Counter-Strike formula tends to send shock waves and produce what can best be described as "community riots" that reach far and wide. I've experienced this first hand as a former mod at Steampowered and a staff member at CS-Nation, just as I'm sure most every Valve staff member has experienced via emails. How is Valve prepared to address these sorts of concerns? Will the ads remain if the community collectively voices their displeasure to the ads, or will you keep them in no matter what? Essentially, will there ever be a point where you go "alright guys, this isn't going to work" and you pull the plug?

Doug Lombardi: Community feedback will be an important input in to how judge the success of advertising in our games, when we do it and when we don’t, and how we implement advertising in games. Initially, when ads move into a space where they haven’t existed before, like onto a Web site that hasn’t previously advertised, they are pretty noticeable for a while. But as long as the ads don’t interfere with the use of the site (like those annoying ones which sit on top of the content you’re trying to read) they quickly become part of the accepted experience.