I agree that turning CS into a casino wasn’t a tasteful choice on Valve’s part but as someone who has played CS at least once a week for decades I can understand that they needed to find a way to cover server costs somehow. I paid $15 dollars for CS:GO and have clocked 4,500 hours in the game. I don’t gamble but I’d rather those who choose to fund the server costs than Valve charge a monthly subscription to everyone. Skin sales alone would have accomplished this without having to have loot boxes and keys and that’s where I think Valve went overboard with it. Also, for a game that provides so much revenue I expect better anti-cheat and more VAC bans, which are rare.
They didn't need to cover server costs for CS 1.6. I wonder why that is? Hint: CS 1.6 wasn't designed from the ground up as a microtransaction vehicle so could have servers run by the community unlike CS:GO where centrally run servers are needed to make microtransactions work, not the other way around.
A company choosing to take a loss on a service is not the same as not needing to pay for it, it was getting paid for.