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

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

#611

Post by jcattle » Mon, Oct 27, 2025, 8:46 AM UTC

mikkupikku wrote: post #590

alexp2021 wrote: post #589

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are they, then?

Regular honest hard working people, who struggle to make ends meet in large part due to gambling addictions and related poor financial decisions. Financially the guys who gamble are even worse off than the alcoholics that don't; there's only so much money you can spend on shit beer a week. The gambling addicts lose far more money far faster. If they were all tossing dice and losing money to each other that wouldn't b…

There's a podcast by 99% Invisible about state lottery. Basically the journalist reporting the story kind of reversed his view on state lotteries over the course of reporting the story. Going from: It's good that we have state lotteries because the money goes back to fund social activities to: It's bad to have lotteries altogether, mainly because of the societal cost of gambling that you've outlined.

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

#612

Post by rldjbpin » Mon, Oct 27, 2025, 1:16 PM UTC

a few days removed, this felt like a knee-jerk overreaction from the market. similar things have happened around other major changes related to the skins economy in the past. [1]

prices have slightly recovered in some cases, but indeed the new inputs for the trade-ups have been inflated beyond measure.

in the past, before trade restrictions, one could "trade up to a knife". now it is literally possible through trash skins you can receive in drops in game. if the lower prices these items are here to stay, then the highest tier stuff will become even more attractive and valuable in the long run.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21392007

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

#613

Post by HaZeust » Mon, Oct 27, 2025, 3:25 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #567

zdc1 wrote: post #155

CS is wild. I used to play and have like 40+ cases from free post-match drops. Because those cases are no longer supplied, the prices have been creeping up and to the right for years now; from $0.40 to $20+. I don't even know why people still buy these, but I will basically never have to pay for a Steam game again.

I had to check but I barely played CS:GO. I have a 5 year veteran coin, untradeable, that's it lol. I also have a $0.03 gun for Payday 2, lol. Nearly 300 "trading cards" but they're all valued between $0.03 and $0.10 at best. Weirdly enough, even the randomest games still get some trading volume. I seriously doubt people are buying cards from random games to complete collections in those volumes, and fully expect it…

People do it for boosting gems so they can level up their Steam profile.

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

#614

Post by zdc1 » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 10:58 AM UTC

imdsm wrote: post #159

zdc1 wrote: post #155

CS is wild. I used to play and have like 40+ cases from free post-match drops. Because those cases are no longer supplied, the prices have been creeping up and to the right for years now; from $0.40 to $20+. I don't even know why people still buy these, but I will basically never have to pay for a Steam game again.

Could you explain more? I played CS 1.6 back in the day, and then we moved onto CSS, but what is it like these days?

I haven't played in years but the core game doesn't seem to have changed much. They tweaked lots: textures, hit-boxes, spray patterns, rankings, game modes, grenade types, guns, etc., but if you play a ranked match it will still be a 5 vs 5 bomb defusal.

The (sellable) lootboxes give you weapon skins. This is cosmetic, but the temptation to express yourself or flex with pretty guns is tempting.

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

#615

Post by nkrisc » Tue, Oct 28, 2025, 7:59 PM UTC

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #574

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.

No, those are your assumptions, not mine. I asked because most electronic payment methods I know of are not available to minors.

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

#616

Post by throwaway48476 » Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 12:23 AM UTC

michaelt wrote: post #499

pityJuke wrote: post #494

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> players grinding out matches just to get random loot box drops I mean... what you have is people operating rooms full of computers running automated bots to farm drops (and presumably accounts to sell later) [0]. [0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3yS6_WDb6w

Right, but they didn’t want that to happen. It’s just a weird side effect that’s surprisingly difficult to prevent - online games have had gold farmers for pretty much as long as there have been online games with gold.

You can not want something to happen but still do so knowing the inevitable result.

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

#617

Post by wffurr » Thu, Oct 30, 2025, 3:45 PM UTC

krapp wrote: post #541

wffurr wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow the home page on that website is a real piece of work. It's amazing to me that someone can honestly believe all those things.

Most American conservatives and Trumpists believe most if not all of those things from my experience, and a lot of what's on that site now reflects official American government policy. The only surprise I see there is at least implied pro-Ukraine sentiment.

Having it all laid out together like that makes it obvious how inconsistent it all is. The mental gymnastics to actually believe all that stuff must be incredible. I read the other day about a theory on to obviously false beliefs as a form of in-group signaling and I can't read this collection any other way.