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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

#151

Post by lurk2 »

beeflet wrote: post #14
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.

they can buy pokemon cards. To be honest, I don't think CS:GO or TF2 or the like are pro-gambling. You learn pretty quickly as a kid that the best way to get good items is through trading, not gambling.

> You learn pretty quickly as a kid that the best way to get good items is through trading, not gambling.

Not if your dad is the one buying you the cards.

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

#152

Post by Aeolun »

gquere wrote: post #144
Bengalilol wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any market maker, such as Valve, is free to establish the rules of its own "reality". I understand your analysis, and I certainly failed to mention that point, but making the overall value less attractive to speculators is not evidence of being "rotten to the core".

They're running an online casino directed at children and have made specific adaptations to bypass legal regulations in several countries.

Anyone purchasing a $20k cosmetic is almost certainly not a child.

If you vote this down, pretty curious what you are thinking? That it’s a legitimate investment? The only people spending that much money on cosmetics are drug dealers.

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

#153

Post by endgame »

bilekas wrote: post #127
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?

> Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections? Steam is still a business, but of all the gaming industry, Gaben is one of the highlights, steam try hard to be extremely pro consumer. Refunds with no questions asked if you've played less than 2 hours of the game, requiring publisher and developers to explicitly state the AI generated content thats in the game to name just 2.

The first one was because the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) took them to court, but yes, they're both very good features.

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

#155

Post by zdc1 »

CS is wild. I used to play and have like 40+ cases from free post-match drops. Because those cases are no longer supplied, the prices have been creeping up and to the right for years now; from $0.40 to $20+. I don't even know why people still buy these, but I will basically never have to pay for a Steam game again.

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

#156

Post by bilekas »

justacrow wrote: post #147
bilekas wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections? Steam is still a business, but of all the gaming industry, Gaben is one of the highlights, steam try hard to be extremely pro consumer. Refunds with no questions asked if you've played less than 2 hours of the game, requiring publisher and developers to explicitly state the AI generated content thats in the game to name just 2.

[flagged]

Ideally kids wouldn't be participating in real world transactions at all, and I'd love to see the numbers of how many were actually kids who directly went to gamble I stead of being pushed into it by streamers which is where I see it constantly.

> Now, thanks to a recent update from Valve, the latter is in a downward spiral, having lost 25% of its value — or $1.75 billion — overnight

The fact that they made this change to make these items far easier to simply earn should say a lot about the ethos of the company though.

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

#157

Post by immibis »

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.

Video gaming has been shown to train some brain areas too. It's definitely better than 1000 hours of Netflix.

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

#158

Post by immibis »

beeflet wrote: post #59
Pooge wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Playing football for 1000 hours doesn't make you better at any other job (i.e real life). Don't be so close-minded; playing games is not different from any other activity.

only because the jobs of our time are fake. Playing football or lacrosse is more "real" than working a desk job. For thousands of years, humans had to hunt and make tools and relied on their wits and strength to survive. Survival in the modern day is mostly a question of obedience. I think the purpose of exploring virtual worlds like quake or counter-strike or something should not be to escape the real world but rath…

It's not "more real" or "more useful" just because our ancient ancestors had to do it.

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

#159

Post by imdsm »

zdc1 wrote: post #155

CS is wild. I used to play and have like 40+ cases from free post-match drops. Because those cases are no longer supplied, the prices have been creeping up and to the right for years now; from $0.40 to $20+. I don't even know why people still buy these, but I will basically never have to pay for a Steam game again.

Could you explain more? I played CS 1.6 back in the day, and then we moved onto CSS, but what is it like these days?

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

#160

Post by tetrisgm »

cornholio wrote: post #142
tetrisgm wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They crashed the premium market and resell value. Prices down. It’s a side effect, but the direct effect to the user.

They don't care about the resell value since they don't earn a commission on those sales. The point is that, for as long as items can be transferred in game, they are always convertible to cash in the real world. Inserting artificial friction inside the game to increase scarcity, such as limiting convertibility of items, will drive those trades away from the game economy and into the third party ecosystem where the d…

Glad to chat with someone who understands in-game economies. I agree, but for a different reason. I don't think Valve cares about the economics that much. I think it's more of a product strategy move.

They have been threatened numerous times with lawsuits over the gambling aspects of the IAP. This moves completely de-risks that. As you said, it's not going to affect profits very directly. It will however make the speculative market collapse, and keep players engaged within the game's economy.

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