Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Counter-Strike's player economy is in a freefall

polygon.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 617 posts

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

#71

Post by renewiltord »

uvaursi wrote: post #47
tetrisgm wrote: post #5

I play CS. This is good. The gambling economy and the creator economy of people pumping their marketplaces and gambling sites is really toxic. It extracts money from kids, all for a nice skin. Making them more affordable is going to make this more fair and sensible.

Remember back in the day when we just downloaded skin packs from some random Geocities website with obnoxious red text on black background and after going through the install.txt written in broken English/Italian, lo and behold your AK47 now had a proper arctic camo skin and it was so much cooler? What was wrong with that? Doesn’t gaben have enough money for his super yachts and sword collections?

This provides a continuous revenue stream that allows maintenance and improvement of the game without affecting gameplay. It's entirely cosmetic. Don't participate in it if you don't want to. I played with stock skins majority of the time till a friend gifted me an AWP Redline after staying at my place. It was cool but to someone who just wants to enjoy the game it hardly matters. Besides you can go to various private servers and play with whatever skins.

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

#72

Post by Ekaros »

alberth wrote: post #16
adrr wrote: post #9

Gambling mechanics for anyone under 18 should be banned. Children can't buy lottery tickets or hit tables in Vegas. Its crazy they can buy loot boxes that real life value.

Would you consider old school coin operated arcades as something that should be banned? Just curious.

Pinball and video games I think are something that can be allowed. Even if the model is slightly predatory in this age. At least you only win game time.

Other types of partly fake skill games surely should be banned from kids. Like crane games where there is some hidden variable. And well anything in same category.

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

#73

Post by breppp »

pryce wrote: post #69
tetrisgm wrote: post #5

I play CS. This is good. The gambling economy and the creator economy of people pumping their marketplaces and gambling sites is really toxic. It extracts money from kids, all for a nice skin. Making them more affordable is going to make this more fair and sensible.

Most of the scarcity in artificial economies like CS is (just as with trading card games) manufactured and vulnerable. Seeing what happens with a rug-pull in a billion dollar artificial economy like this is a valuable lesson for anyone watching. If/when the huge Satoshi bitcoin stash gets traded in, we'll see similar outcomes there too.

Probably the biggest possible investment for quantum computing today is all the abandoned bitcoins wallets ripe for taking

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

#74

Post by galaxy_gas »

cornholio wrote: post #51
tetrisgm wrote: post #5

I play CS. This is good. The gambling economy and the creator economy of people pumping their marketplaces and gambling sites is really toxic. It extracts money from kids, all for a nice skin. Making them more affordable is going to make this more fair and sensible.

The purpose of the update is certainly not to reduce the cost of these items, but to better position Valve to earn this revenue steam, as opposed to third party scalpers. Looks like it's working.

I am fine with this . Every third party in this ecosystem is literal scum

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

#75

Post by dandanua »

adrr wrote: post #9

Gambling mechanics for anyone under 18 should be banned. Children can't buy lottery tickets or hit tables in Vegas. Its crazy they can buy loot boxes that real life value.

Gambling mechanics is everywhere nowadays, especially in mobile games. It's almost like an industry standard. I think the only solution is to ban all in-game purchases completely.

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

#76

Post by rand17 »

someothherguyy wrote: post #13
jalapenos wrote: post #12

> Counter-Strike's player economy There's a what? I guess once you've maxed out wasted hours of time playing it, you start wasting money too? Less absurd than NFTs though I guess

> wasted hours of time playing it What would you dictate that humans do instead to not be wasteful with their time? Comment on threads about games?

Wasted is a rather strong word and yes, the whole argument is a slippery slope _but_ I can imagine sports that are less about glorifying deadly violence in a very realistic manner - the loot box and real money part is just the bitter cherry on top.

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

#77

Post by rightbyte »

TheBicPen wrote: post #44
gruez wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>and in France we get an adapted case opening that looks less random (X-Ray: you see what's in the box before opening it, but you have to open it to X-Ray the next one) That still feels like gambling, but rather than gambling on what the current case contains you're gambling on the second one might contain.

And in France specifically, the first case you open is guaranteed to not be a good item. So it's essentially the same system but with an additional $2,50 entry fee

Ye seems like not going with the spirit of the law. But the indirection has to remove alot of the gambling thrill though?

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

#78

Post by sintax »

Fade_Dance wrote: post #54
TheBicPen wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And in France specifically, the first case you open is guaranteed to not be a good item. So it's essentially the same system but with an additional $2,50 entry fee

I propose any company that flagrantly violates the intent of a ruling like that is sent to a special judge who operates in the same manner - bring forth a penalty while explicitly looking for every violation and arcane loophole to punish the company with. It's "technically" just, after all.

I'll bet apple fan boys will agree to this statement for Valve or any other company, but when it comes to apple having to open up their walled garden in EU and then using every dirty trick in the book to make it impossible, oh boy...

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

#79

Post by rkomorn »

pprotas wrote: post #70
pryce wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the scarcity in artificial economies like CS is (just as with trading card games) manufactured and vulnerable. Seeing what happens with a rug-pull in a billion dollar artificial economy like this is a valuable lesson for anyone watching. If/when the huge Satoshi bitcoin stash gets traded in, we'll see similar outcomes there too.

What makes this (or cypto) economy ‘artificial’, and why is our real-world economy not artificial? Plenty of market manipulation and rug pulls happening on the regular stock market as well

They wrote the scarcity is artificial.

I'd say that's true: if you have one skin, there's virtually zero production cost to making more copies of said skin.

It's not that different for many things in the real world, I suppose (eg: if you sell way above cost, then your cost is also arguably zero), but I'd say it's magnified in the digital world (or even with NFTs).

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

#80

Post by rkomorn »

breppp wrote: post #73
pryce wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the scarcity in artificial economies like CS is (just as with trading card games) manufactured and vulnerable. Seeing what happens with a rug-pull in a billion dollar artificial economy like this is a valuable lesson for anyone watching. If/when the huge Satoshi bitcoin stash gets traded in, we'll see similar outcomes there too.

Probably the biggest possible investment for quantum computing today is all the abandoned bitcoins wallets ripe for taking

If you can get abandoned wallets, can't you just get any and all wallets?

Edit: minus some race conditions of people changing passwords/moving/emptying wallets.

Post reply on HN