Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by salamanteri » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 8:58 AM UTC

system2 wrote: post #97

FYI some items go for $1.5M. "The GOAT of expensive skins in CS2 is the Karambit Case Hardened in the "Blue Gem" pattern. While the original is costly, one Factory-New variant with pattern 387 reached a staggering $1.5 million! The rarity comes down to its blue pattern, which is incredibly rare on a Karambit."

I find it funny that the person who owns this skin was offered $1.5 million over 4 years ago, and he said it was too low so he refused to sell it.

There is a chance this skin won't sell at all anymore, not for that price at least.

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

#572

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 8:59 AM UTC

mmooss wrote: post #512

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?

Look how much people spend on aesthetics of other things - clothes, cars, watches, etc. Why is this different?

Because in this case the value can change overnight, and Valve doesn't otherwise have control over the market (value) of the items.

Expensive clothes aren't much more expensive to produce than cheaper ones, but it is known that brands like Louis Vuitton will destroy old stock rather than put it on sale. Some products are intrinsically valuable though, because production can't scale as well - some cars (although a brand can do a new design and mass produce it), watches, semiconductor manufacturing, etc are constrained due to their complexity.

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

#573

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:00 AM UTC

pnt12 wrote: post #167

novoreorx wrote: post #154

Took me sometime to understand why these items can be so expensive, The CS trading market makes NFTs look like child's play.

That's hyperbolic. You had high profile celebrities advertising NFTs, and stuff valued at millions, that's a whole other scale. Skins have their place when they're modestly priced, as they also have quite a modest impact. But the whole gambling, artificial restrictions and trading is quite suspicious indeed.

NFTs failed because organized crime didn't latch onto it like they did CS knives. Only half-joking, the other half is stuff like grey market money conversion as mentioned in another thread.

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

#574

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:03 AM UTC

nkrisc wrote: post #247

How are kids under 18 paying for stuff like this? What means of payment are they using that their parents don’t notice? Genuine question, been at least 20 years since I was that age.

There's a lot of assumptions in your comment, such as that people under 18 don't have their own money, that their parents monitor it, that it should be a secret, etc. And maybe that only under 18's spend money in video games, but I haven't read the article in detail, don't know if it's mentioned.

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

#575

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:04 AM UTC

SwtCyber wrote: post #276

It's wild how a virtual knife in a 20-year-old shooter can have more volatile market behavior than some national currencies

How is that wild? Currency values are controlled by governments and international market forces, virtual knives by the publisher and trading platforms. Valve can collapse the whole market with one proverbial press of a button, you'd need to be an autocrat to do that in real life and even then it wouldn't be easy.

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

#576

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:06 AM UTC

salamanteri wrote: post #571

system2 wrote: post #97

FYI some items go for $1.5M. "The GOAT of expensive skins in CS2 is the Karambit Case Hardened in the "Blue Gem" pattern. While the original is costly, one Factory-New variant with pattern 387 reached a staggering $1.5 million! The rarity comes down to its blue pattern, which is incredibly rare on a Karambit."

I find it funny that the person who owns this skin was offered $1.5 million over 4 years ago, and he said it was too low so he refused to sell it. There is a chance this skin won't sell at all anymore, not for that price at least.

It's like that with any investment, cash out or wait for it to go up?

I mean I could've bought more or kept my Tesla stock and earn more as it became a trillion dollar company, but I had lost faith in it by then and took my gains.

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

#577

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:07 AM UTC

epolanski wrote: post #342

lenerdenator wrote: post #339

Video games shouldn't have economies.

Unless it's MMOs, then those having economies is unavoidable.

I think the previous commenter meant real-life economies, not in-game ones so much. Although with any MMO or any multiplayer game with trading for that matter, there will be a grey market of trading items, gold, or characters for real money, and a bot market to go with it.

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

#578

Post by domlebo70 » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:08 AM UTC

riotnrrd wrote: post #450

I used to work at Valve -- on the CS:GO team, no less -- although I left nearly a decade ago. I don't know what prompted this change but I have some suspicions. Even when I was there and the loot box system was new to CS:GO, there were concerns that a lot of trading was happening outside of the marketplace. The trading happened elsewhere because you can't have more than $300 in your Steam wallet (more than this would…

I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the CS2 rollout (2 years and counting) and the number of bugs, poor performance, and issues?

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

#579

Post by Cthulhu_ » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:09 AM UTC

messe wrote: post #64

vecter wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No more than someone spending a few thousand on a tiny designer bag that can fit almost nothing inside.

It's a consistent viewpoint to think that those things are more or less equally nuts. The only difference with the designer bag is that there is scarcity, but that's about it.

Actually with CS stuff there's scarcity too, but since it's digital it's easy to change. Same with designer bags (nothing stopping them from churning out more, but they choose not to do that). Not so with vintage items though, since they're no longer made.

But a lot of Stuff is made with future vintage in mind, e.g. every Ferrari or other high end sports car will only appreciate in value.

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

#580

Post by Imustaskforhelp » Sat, Oct 25, 2025, 9:42 AM UTC

throw10920 wrote: post #556

Imustaskforhelp wrote: post #401

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Your comments are false due to your total ignorance of reality, and your malicious lying about my statements indicates that you don't care that they're false - you'll say anything plausible, regardless of truth, to advance whatever agenda you have. They seem to live in this bubble where steam is extremely bad or something. Nothing is as good or as bad as it seems. I think valve is still decent but I prefer Gog-game…

Yes, of course, I'm not claiming that Steam is some utopic paradise or that GabeN is a saint or anything. Steam has problems too - most notably the huge skins gambling issue that you mention. I'm just specifically saying that out of all of its problems, "rent-seeking" is definitely not one of them. > The same is true for linux/Windows as well. You could say that windows has the market at work but the point becomes mo…

Yea I agree rent seeking is definitely not the problem, huge skins gambling is.

> modulo the gambling problem, isn't really "bad". Can you please explain to me what you mean by this. I feel like valve enabled skins gambling which even underage people could do for a long time, so there is some truth about it and coffeezilla made a video about it https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13eiDhuvM6Y

I am just saying the ethics of the company isn't perfect when they enabled gambling for a long time, I am not sure if right now it can be fixed or how this steps that they did right now fixes that problem if I am being honest.