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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

#171

Post by computerex »

c048 wrote: post #161
Aeolun wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Considering how much this particular system has been linked to real life crime and gangs, you're not far off. People downvoting you must either not be aware of this, or have a personal stake in it.

I think people have a hard time viewing Valve as “evil” given what they have done in the gaming industry.

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

#172

Post by omcnoe »

EZ-E wrote: post #81
est wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 pri…

China notoriously has intense capital controls. It's difficult for ordinary Chinese citizens to take capital out of the country. CS2 items can be bought and sold in both USD and RMB, and can be transferred between Chinese and international accounts. It's not about Steam wallet balances.

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

#173

Post by omcnoe »

beeflet wrote: post #22
ramesh31 wrote: post #11

Valve employs an army of economists (notably Yanis Varoufakis as alumn) to make these decisions. It was certainly purposeful and will balance itself out.

this is what I think. The change is that 10 of the highest-level weapon textures can be traded for a knife texture: the result is that the supply of knife textures goes up, but the supply of high-level weapon textures goes down significantly more. It's not so much a depreciation of knife textures, as a distribution of this value down the chain of item rarities.

The broader impact is that it creates a lot of uncertainty around valuations in the market. This is probably the most impactful (on valuations) policy change made by Valve in the history of the market. Now there is an increased fear that more similar such changes may be coming down the pipeline.

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

#174

Post by adriatp »

It seems more like a market strategy than an economic collapse. Afterall they control the skin market, and this will lead more players to buy very expensive skins (cheaper than the day before yesterday, but still quite pricey). Also, not all skins went down in price, the red ones from collections with gold skins even increased in value.

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

#175

Post by gquere »

Aeolun wrote: post #152
gquere wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I didn't downvote you (my account is low reputation) but your argument is weak: that some skins go for absurd amount of money says nothing of the rest of the ecosystem. There can both be children and drug dealers (ab)using the same "gaming" mechanics.

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

#176

Post by computerex »

bilekas wrote: post #156
justacrow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[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 chan…

The thing is Valve is clearly aware of the fact that it’s getting kids addicted to gambling. They have the data. It’s extremely ubiquitous. This has been an ongoing issue for a while and Valve has rightly been criticized for willfully getting kids addicted.

Yes the parents have a responsibility to look after their kids. But that doesn’t give Valve a free pass, particularly when they used dark patterns to appeal to children.

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

#177

Post by bombcar »

user432678 wrote: post #90
beeflet wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

dang should enable selling posts and create a secondary market. My posts with the most upvotes can be sold to you and now YOU’RE the famous one!

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

#178

Post by matsemann »

Aeolun wrote: post #152
gquere wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If you vote this down, pretty curious what you are thinking?

That you used a straw man. The $20k cosmetics weren't mentioned, and even if some buy these, the thing itself can still very well be targeted as gambling towards children.

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

#179

Post by bob1029 »

This is good news. It seems some parts of the gaming industry are starting to recover.

I contend that games like Team Fortress 2 were also ruined by the F2P loot box crap. It's not that they took anything away, but it attracted a certain kind of customer that is very unappealing to the prior base. The "hats" made me walk away from TF2. No one on average seemed serious about the core gameplay anymore. Taking away that up front cost to play cheapened the experience for the existing paying customers. It's like going from shopping at Whole Foods to Walmart.

Robinhood is your go-to application if you want to gamble legally and efficiently without (as much) fear of a single actor ruining your day.

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

#180

Post by _cenw »

close04 wrote: post #169
_cenw wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sv_pure specifically actually allows the server admin to allow selective model/material swaps.

I was thinking of your description of the situation before sv_pure. What you wrote sounded like "sure some people completely destroyed the game but you got to see some cool skins". Skins can't make up for wallhacks, and wallhacks won't let you enjoy the skins. It wasn't a tenable situation.

Well, both. I wish less servers had enabled sv_pure in extra strict mode, but it was a solution to the wallhacking and extra loud footsteps. It was also the start of the decline of being able to run your own mods.
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