ShearsCan you explain why this is a dick move? (Not trolling, I just genuinely don't know)
What CBT said and also the map workshop has insane potential, to list a few:
- Maps wouldn't need to be packaged with the game/dedicated server downloads, the default maps weigh ~4.4 gigs in total, that reduces sizes from ~7.1 gigs to ~2.7 gigs (almost a third). The price you pay is that you have to download maps the first time you're playing on them, which is quite negligible (~50MB at ~1MB/s)
- FastDL wouldn't be required anymore for a large majority of servers (that's a considerable amount of effort and money saved), while also benefitting the users by providing localized download servers (the ones you download Steam games from)
- (I could be wrong but I assume) This would simplify the process of making custom maps official, creators wouldn't need to wait on Valve replies to get map updates in the game, Valve wouldn't need to push a game update to have a new map featured on servers (In a perfect world, you'd see special Valve servers featuring and rotating new maps while allowing players to rate them)
- (A bit more technical), not having maps identified solely by their file name is a much more sane solution, you don't need to resort to versioning schemes to avoid collisions.
Sadly there is no graphical interface to manage maps, the console commands to manage them are iffy, IIRC changing maps to a workshop one is convoluted, demo palyer can't automatically find workshop maps (I'll report this on their issue tracker today)
However those are all simple problems that can be fixed, either by Valve or possibly some community tooling, there's just no real reason for us to work on it