Yes, it is about forcing everyone to switch and I’m sorry but you sound completely ignorant of what goes into a game like CS that is used in professional esports. CS1.6 and CS:Source are locked codebases. There are no official servers for them. They are standalone server games only. They are not getting updates unless there are some major exploits. CS:GO is the official, active codebase and its the same codebase as CS2, upgraded to Source2.

It has nothing to do “clouds” (a term you’re not even using correctly) and technical reasons are the entirety of the reasons. They’re not smokescreens. They are exactly why they did what they did - to maintain 1 active codebase that everyone playing uses. That’s it. There’s no mystery or conspiracy.