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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

#221

Post by portaouflop »

fendy3002 wrote: post #208
Aerolfos wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Refunds with no questions asked if you've played less than 2 hours of the game, Weaker than standard physical store consumer protections (no playtime restriction on returns, obviously), and (much) weaker than GOGs refund: 1 month after purchase, no playtime restriction. I believe they explicitly called out the equivalent for physical stores and european consumer protection in general when they announced the policy…

GOGs refund is 1 month? Man I can clear DMC5 twice in one week then do a refund in that case.

You can also share games you purchased at GoG with all your friends. They do give you a lot of freedom.

It’s maybe the only really “good” actor in that industry left so I try to support them as much as possible

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

#222

Post by [deleted] »

Bengalilol wrote: post #132

I bet this is an on-purpose move by Valve, and I view this as a sane action. [1] Having a game where some players only play in order to win money is, for sure, a no go. If the game is fun, then players will keep on playing it. It may also keep some money thirsty (sometimes very toxic) people at the gates. It is also smoothing players' frustration and shopping-spree habits in order to obtain a rare item. If you have t…

[deleted]

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

#223

Post by portaouflop »

Spacemolte wrote: post #210
funflame wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game is rated as 'Mature 17+', and Steam has an age confirmation page before accessing the store page of the game. Are you expecting Valve to add ages verification based on ID like the new UK law to block all the kids? I thought we had parents for you know, parenting. It shouldn't fall into a company to manage what a kid is doing when the product is not for kids.

Nope, just no. When you make billions you have another kind of responsibility, you can't just brush that off as a problem with parenting. I'm willing to bet a lot of the young people struggling with gambing addictions started with loot boxes like the ones valve make a ton of money on.

Loot boxes in itself are the problem.

You can’t make a non-toxic free2play game.

People need to buy from stores like GoG and stop supporting f2p games at all.

Of course that’s never going to happen; an entire generation was raised on f2p

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

#224

Post by tecleandor »

daanbread wrote: post #203
Bengalilol wrote: post #132

I bet this is an on-purpose move by Valve, and I view this as a sane action. [1] Having a game where some players only play in order to win money is, for sure, a no go. If the game is fun, then players will keep on playing it. It may also keep some money thirsty (sometimes very toxic) people at the gates. It is also smoothing players' frustration and shopping-spree habits in order to obtain a rare item. If you have t…

This doesn't explain though "why now?". All of these reasons would make sense, but they've been in legal disputes before in the 13 years since the game came out. And why would they suddenly care about players' frustration? The skins economy isn't wildly different now than previously.

Well, I don't know their motives, but if we were talking just about legal issues, at least in the EU we're seeing stricter laws about loot boxes this year (and I'm all in about that).

https://siege.gg/news/several-eu-countries-have-introduced-s...

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

#225

Post by catmanjan »

Dead_Lemon wrote: post #163
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.

The game does have a mature rating, so parents should be vetting their activity. I would still contend and say the gambling aspect, with real money, is a net negative to the community.

There's a big difference between 15 and 18 though...

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

#226

Post by ehnto »

friedtofu wrote: post #141
ehnto wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 $2…

This is what turned me off of Global Offensive, and CS2 I guess but it doesnt look like much(if anything) has changed between GO and CS2 compared to the changes made from 1.6 -> Source -> GO. Looking back to ~2012/2013 and its seeming to be clear now that the introduction of weapon crates, the steam marketplace, and all of the other MTX in all of their(proprietary) competitve games may have been a good indication tha…

Huh, I wonder what my steamID length was. I would have signed up very early. I will have to check!

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

#227

Post by EZ-E »

omcnoe wrote: post #172
EZ-E wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Interesting. I'm curious though, assuming I am Chinese and I trade knives for USD - where would I be able to receive USD to evade capital control? Surely not my bank account or Steam wallet. Or is it for people with bank account in both countries? But in that case crypto could be more convenient? I'm puzzled

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

#228

Post by solsane »

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.

Well, that’s lootbox mechanics. I don’t see how this most recent iteration changes any of that.

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

#229

Post by jsheard »

catmanjan wrote: post #225
Dead_Lemon wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The game does have a mature rating, so parents should be vetting their activity. I would still contend and say the gambling aspect, with real money, is a net negative to the community.

There's a big difference between 15 and 18 though...

I think most countries have much stricter enforcement for gambling age limits, too. If you sell a kid a copy of GTA5 that's their parents problem, but if you allow kids into your casino it's your problem.

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

#230

Post by __alexs »

gquere wrote: post #140
Bengalilol wrote: post #132

I bet this is an on-purpose move by Valve, and I view this as a sane action. [1] Having a game where some players only play in order to win money is, for sure, a no go. If the game is fun, then players will keep on playing it. It may also keep some money thirsty (sometimes very toxic) people at the gates. It is also smoothing players' frustration and shopping-spree habits in order to obtain a rare item. If you have t…

They did this to take a bigger cut of the market because most trades happened off-platform. This new update ensures that they will sell more of their new items through their shop (contract cases) because it's going to be the only way to get the red items to fuses into "valuable" knives. They're rotten to the core.

> most trades happened off-platform

I thought it was impossible to trade off platform? All item trades happen within Steam, they have an API to facilitate it and everything.

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