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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

#451

Post by AgentMatrixAI »

brachkow wrote: post #340

1) My childhood which coincided with peak of unregulated lootbox-skin markets (around 2013-2015). And I and my CS-playing peers had a happy childhood because of… skins gambling. Most of us were able to earn money to buy a pizza or some additional snack betting on teams, or trading keys. Some exceptionaly lucky or with natural born trading skills were earning serious money — from quater to multiple salaries of an adul…

Reading this makes me sad at how different my generation was compared to the new ones.

I remember when Counterstrike 1.3 came out and everybody at my school were talking about it and playing it. We would line up at computer labs before lunch started, pay a toonie and entire room would crackle with in-game radio comms, AK47 and HE going off with a room full of people side by side excitedly shouting for an hour until lunch was over.

When classes finished we would head back to the lab again and we would play endless round of de_dust 1 & 2, de_rats, fy_iceworld and the occasional as_oilrig and the rush of being the VIP and experiencing my first headshot.

Sometimes the admin running the labs would add fun mods like no gravity and weird stuff....

It was such a memorable and social fun time and it runs in complete contrast to the everything-gambling culture that has taken foothold....

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

#452

Post by skeaker »

Neil44 wrote: post #245
neilv wrote: post #166

> Prior to the most recent update, some Knives, like a Doppler Ruby Butterfly Knife, could fetch around $20,000 on third-party storefronts like CSFloat. How many whales are buying an in-game cosmetic for $20K for their own use? How much of this is day-trading? How much is investing? How much is fabricated by trading platforms? How much is money laundering? How much is a criminal payments channel?

I thought the same. Surely the number of people buying a 20k knife so it looks good when they play must be extremely low. The bulk have to be speculators.

This is true and it is also why a large portion of the playerbase likes this change. It makes many of these knives much more affordable for people that actually play the game.

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

#453

Post by doug_durham »

neilv wrote: post #166

> Prior to the most recent update, some Knives, like a Doppler Ruby Butterfly Knife, could fetch around $20,000 on third-party storefronts like CSFloat. How many whales are buying an in-game cosmetic for $20K for their own use? How much of this is day-trading? How much is investing? How much is fabricated by trading platforms? How much is money laundering? How much is a criminal payments channel?

I think the majority is money laundering.

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

#454

Post by the_gipsy »

mothballed wrote: post #429
mikkupikku wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not trolling. People living paycheck to paycheck, without much in the way of financial literacy, are big consumers of "made to be collectible" widgets because they're desperate for appreciating assets and don't know how to do better when they struggle to save up a few hundred dollars (in no small part, because of their gambling addictions.) Funko pops, baseball cards, knife skins, it's all used this way.

It's not always instructive to assume people making seemingly bad financial decisions are acting irrationally. People living paycheck to paycheck due to child support orders, alimony, or other judgements taking a giant cut of their paycheck are likely buying collectibles instead of on-paper stocks or commodities because they can actually keep those without the state being able to as easily take them. Also, the sketch…

Nobody launders money this way.

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

#455

Post by mrguyorama »

lanfeust6 wrote: post #379
gquere wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AFAIK you don't need a credit card linked to the account, you can get in-store credit from selling the guaranteed drop items from playing a few matches, this is enough to get you started trading.

That sounds like a pittance. Either way they would be playing with money they didn't put in themselves.

It isn't a pittance.

It's literally "The first hit is free". The sketchy gambling sites spot you bonus skins and stuff for the same reason. It doesn't matter, they don't actually have to ever pay out, so they can just give you fake money to get you addicted.

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

#456

Post by mrguyorama »

mrheosuper wrote: post #91
smt88 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Close to 0% of children do their own grocery shopping and buy their own boxes of cereal

And 0% of children having credit card to buy lootbox (My country requires you to be over 18 to have one)

Steam has giftcards you can buy at any store with your birthday cash.

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

#457

Post by mothballed »

the_gipsy wrote: post #454
mothballed wrote: post #429

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not always instructive to assume people making seemingly bad financial decisions are acting irrationally. People living paycheck to paycheck due to child support orders, alimony, or other judgements taking a giant cut of their paycheck are likely buying collectibles instead of on-paper stocks or commodities because they can actually keep those without the state being able to as easily take them. Also, the sketch…

Nobody launders money this way.

If you're referring to literal only scratch-offs, maybe. Gambling in general (the point I was addressing using the example), you couldn't be more wrong.

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

#459

Post by mrguyorama »

evrimoztamur wrote: post #327
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.

Oh gee, I'm so glad all these smart people want to tell me about how we shouldn't build the torment nexus...

After they already went and built the torment nexus (and were paid handsomely for it)

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

#460

Post by hhmc »

brachkow wrote: post #340

1) My childhood which coincided with peak of unregulated lootbox-skin markets (around 2013-2015). And I and my CS-playing peers had a happy childhood because of… skins gambling. Most of us were able to earn money to buy a pizza or some additional snack betting on teams, or trading keys. Some exceptionaly lucky or with natural born trading skills were earning serious money — from quater to multiple salaries of an adul…

> Most of us were able to earn money to buy a pizza or some additional snack betting on teams, or trading keys.

Unless I'm missing something, this is zero sum -- so it follows that a bunch of people mostly lost money (perhaps also during their childhoods)

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