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Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

polygon.com

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Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#81

Post by EZ-E »

est wrote: post #36
mkagenius wrote: post #2

Interesting that a whole economy is based on fake supply constraint. Or is making butterfly knife really hard? It seems like NFT before NFT.

it's not a fake supply CSGO knifes actually currency run by shadow banks providing RMB USD convertion. Google for "挂刀"

Can you explain the shadow banking / conversion angle? All I found was that selling knives was used to get a discount on steam balance thanks to price arbitrage.

> "Selling Knives" (挂刀) refers to the technique of buying in-game items from 3rd-party (Chinese) trading sites like NetEase BUFF, C5, IGXE, and UUYP, and then selling them on the Steam Market to obtain a discounted Steam Wallet balance by capitalizing on price differences.

I'm surprised the price difference did not disappear if people make that trade.

Source https://github.com/EricZhu-42/SteamTradingSiteTracker/wiki

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#82

Post by shlant »

mrheosuper wrote: post #27
adrr wrote: post #9

Gambling mechanics for anyone under 18 should be banned. Children can't buy lottery tickets or hit tables in Vegas. Its crazy they can buy loot boxes that real life value.

But children can buy a cereal box that has some "rare" card.

can't tell if this is sarcasm

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#83

Post by ehnto »

jayd16 wrote: post #57
uvaursi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember back in the day when we just downloaded skin packs from some random Geocities website with obnoxious red text on black background and after going through the install.txt written in broken English/Italian, lo and behold your AK47 now had a proper arctic camo skin and it was so much cooler? What was wrong with that? Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections?

Its about showing off to other players. You can still do local game mods just fine but that's not what people are after.

Which is an easy technical problem to solve, but the liability of abuse when sharing user content with other users is not palatable.

It is also not impressive to others, not a status symbol, and that's actually the purpose of skins in the modern day. No one grinds 1000hrs of warframe for a skin just because they think it looks cool, they think it makes THEM look cool. They want people to be impressed that they had $2000 to spend on a knife, not that the knife skin was neat. The skin is an auxiliary component to the task.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#84

Post by highwaylights »

breppp wrote: post #73
pryce wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the scarcity in artificial economies like CS is (just as with trading card games) manufactured and vulnerable. Seeing what happens with a rug-pull in a billion dollar artificial economy like this is a valuable lesson for anyone watching. If/when the huge Satoshi bitcoin stash gets traded in, we'll see similar outcomes there too.

Probably the biggest possible investment for quantum computing today is all the abandoned bitcoins wallets ripe for taking

Why would that only apply to abandoned wallets?

In a scenario where you have a powerful enough quantum computer and are able to break the encryption you can access any wallet (I.e. the system would be done, and the value would be zero).

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#85

Post by yard2010 »

Gigachad wrote: post #58
neilwilson wrote: post #49

So high prices induce new supply in a market to relieve shortages and the “economy is in free fall”? Sounds like it is working as it should. Those with oversight fixing supply in response to price signals when the private system is unable to. Wouldn’t it be nice if those in charge of the economy in the real world made the same sort of intervention.

The supply of digital knife skins is infinite and free. The only reason they hold any value at all is because a company artificially restricts them. Doesn’t really tie in to actual markets involving physical item.

Isn't it the same with USD to some extent?

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#86

Post by tdeck »

gruez wrote: post #33
TheRoque wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI, this is already the case in some countries. In Belgium or Netherland, it's straight up banned, and in France we get an adapted case opening that looks less random (X-Ray: you see what's in the box before opening it, but you have to open it to X-Ray the next one)

>and in France we get an adapted case opening that looks less random (X-Ray: you see what's in the box before opening it, but you have to open it to X-Ray the next one) That still feels like gambling, but rather than gambling on what the current case contains you're gambling on the second one might contain.

This sounds like that betting game in the Stormlight Archives books that's meant to circumvent the religious prohibition on predicting the future.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#87

Post by yard2010 »

breppp wrote: post #73
pryce wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the scarcity in artificial economies like CS is (just as with trading card games) manufactured and vulnerable. Seeing what happens with a rug-pull in a billion dollar artificial economy like this is a valuable lesson for anyone watching. If/when the huge Satoshi bitcoin stash gets traded in, we'll see similar outcomes there too.

Probably the biggest possible investment for quantum computing today is all the abandoned bitcoins wallets ripe for taking

Honest question why would anyone harvest Bitcoin after this? Wouldn't it lose all its value since everyone has everyone key now?

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#88

Post by formerly_proven »

jayd16 wrote: post #57
uvaursi wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember back in the day when we just downloaded skin packs from some random Geocities website with obnoxious red text on black background and after going through the install.txt written in broken English/Italian, lo and behold your AK47 now had a proper arctic camo skin and it was so much cooler? What was wrong with that? Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections?

Its about showing off to other players. You can still do local game mods just fine but that's not what people are after.

So-called skin changers (which modify what skins you yourself see in-game) are actually considered bannable cheats.

Re: Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

#90

Post by user432678 »

beeflet wrote: post #24
mashlol wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you say the same if someone played 1000 hours of a sport?

No. If you play 1000 hours of a sport, you will at least be stronger, more coordinated, more agile. But the downsides are more about repetitive strain injury and the possibility of screwing up your joints. Different benefits and downsides. Of course, a lot of guys are suckered into sports-related gambling these days too.

How about 1000 hours reading/commenting HN?
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