they were never going to be able to release a totally new game without a lot of backlash from the addict skin trading communities. They wouldn’t want to risk their free income from the whales by splitting the player base and eventually shunning the skin investors stuck on the old game.
I don’t see it as very anti-consumer that every skin and statrak item has been brought along to the new game. I agree it would be nice to be able to play the old one, but I’d rather the option to torrent old clients and host my own dedicated server on the old one than be forced to upgrade to the new one. They don’t host it anymore, pirate away Who cares?
This release has sucked ass, CS:sources release sucked ass, Condition Zero as a whole sucked ass, and ask anyone old enough, the move to 1.6 from 1.5 sucked ass.
I still expect it to end up a good game, just like 1.6 and source eventually was.