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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

#321

Post by BOBOTWINSTON »

Raed667 wrote: post #311

Can someone explain to me how such an "economy" can grow so large ? How many people actually care about the skin of the CS knife or gun?

Short Answer: The whys can just be boiled down to gambling, weird investing, flexing wealth, sports fandom stuff, or wanting to invest in your hobby.

Long Answer: It is a bit of a perfect storm, and you'll get a lot of mixed answers to this, however these are the reasons I see roughly in order of their impact.

1. Skins are the vehicle for gambling (you bet them instead of $). The loot boxes definitely get people hooked, but the skin gambling arena is a whole different beast.

2. Valve, whether by luck or skill, created a perfect system of scarcity. I can elaborate a lot on how this is done. The rarity of the skins is one thing, but the float system giving each drop a mostly unique appearance causes a 2nd tier of scarcity that adds a lot of value. They hired a bigwig Greek economist to develop this system.

3. The market has been stable-ish for long enough that some people view it as a legitimate safe investment. I have heard this is very popular in China, but I really don't know how this behavior is spread out globally. I have a friend with over $100k in the market (well, he did before this).

4. Almost everyone I know who plays seriously has at least invested a small amount in the game. I play with roughly the same 8 people, and 7 of us all spent $1-2k on the game, with inventories ranging from $1-5k.

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

#322

Post by paradoxyl »

funflame wrote: post #181
justacrow wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

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.

Should 17-year-olds be gambling? They're still in high school, the high-tech excuse of blaming the parents while pocketing billions of dollars is odious and convincing a jury to slap these companies with tobacco industry levels of damage remains feasible.

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

#323

Post by dpoloncsak »

sellmesoap wrote: post #265
gquere wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Trades happening off market is also due to valve not having a way to cash out. If you sell your $20,000 item on the steam marketplace that's a lot of games you can buy, but they won't send you money.

FWIW, people were purchasing Steam Decks with the "Steam Money", then reselling the console for cash.

Its still not "cashing out", but I'm sure some made some decent money. I would assume you could sell game keys to those less-than-reputable sites as well? Dunno

Agreed overall though, these are just extensions of "happening off-market"

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

#324

Post by adezxc »

BOBOTWINSTON wrote: post #321
Raed667 wrote: post #311

Can someone explain to me how such an "economy" can grow so large ? How many people actually care about the skin of the CS knife or gun?

Short Answer: The whys can just be boiled down to gambling, weird investing, flexing wealth, sports fandom stuff, or wanting to invest in your hobby. Long Answer: It is a bit of a perfect storm, and you'll get a lot of mixed answers to this, however these are the reasons I see roughly in order of their impact. 1. Skins are the vehicle for gambling (you bet them instead of $). The loot boxes definitely get people hook…

Is there a source on this bigwig Greek economist or is there sarcasm hidden in that point?

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

#325

Post by Am4TIfIsER0ppos »

jsheard wrote: post #256
tasuki wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does "factory new" mean? That it... hasn't been scratched? Is that... how Counter Strike works?

Each instance of a CS skin is assigned a random amount of wear between 0 and 1, so two copies of the same skin can be worth more or less money depending on their condition. To be clear the value is fixed, actually using a skin won't make it dirtier. Factory New is the highest tier with a wear value between 0 and 0.07. The game itself only distinguishes between those ranges of values, but it's possible to query the ex…

Now that you explain that aspect of these dumb skins I now think they are even dumber. Thank you.

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

#326

Post by imchillyb »

Building a business off of another’s business is risky. There is a non zero chance that the original business will take steps to manipulate, change, alter, or outright control the outcome. That’s what Valve did.

Tomorrow Valve could decide that the value of crates is too high so they drop the price of crates to a penny a piece. What would that do to this 3rd party market? Poof.

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

#327

Post by evrimoztamur »

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.

Yanis Varoufakis is now writing and warning us about digital feudalism, seemingly based on his learnings at his Valve tenure.

Valve, as a digital feudalist, generates funds, practically for free, from both transactions of items and the lootboxes. It operates the markets on which digital goods are traded, taxes all sales occurring on these platforms.

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

#328

Post by duxup »

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…

>Having a game where some players only play in order to win money is, for sure, a no go.

They kinda chose that ... a long time ago.

Maybe they changed their mind.

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

#329

Post by lunias »

Make a regulation that if you have RMT in your game then you have to prefix the official title accordingly, i.e. "RMT: ${my_game_name}". It appears that Valve has made a change that is good for the game, but bad for the merchants. Gambling mechanics in a game are fun, but actual gambling needs to be very explicitly flagged as such and come with a lot more restrictions. I'll surely defend a person's right to gamble, but I find it insidious how culturally acceptable actual gambling has become.

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

#330

Post by chii »

tonyhart7 wrote: post #283
chii wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

only to the extent that they are both artificial. The totality of USD _represents_ the totality of all resources that exist under the control of the USA (ala, the people, gov't, companies etc, as well as any natural resources). The counterstrike skins don't represent such real life physical resources.

You retelling how money works on how money works comment USD is human created artificial item, as real as human believe that skins in video games worth something "The counterstrike skins don't represent such real life physical resources." it represend steam wallet currency

my specific point is to claim that skins are not a currency - the crucial difference between things that are both artificial.
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