Counter-Strike's Player Economy Is In a Multi-Billion Dollar Freefall (polygon.com)
- Reference: 0179862946
- News link: https://games.slashdot.org/story/25/10/24/1352255/counter-strikes-player-economy-is-in-a-multi-billion-dollar-freefall
- Source link: https://www.polygon.com/counter-strike-cs-player-economy-multi-billion-dollar-freefall/
> First, some context. Counter-Strike is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter. As with most other F2P games, it generates revenue from selling cosmetics. They arrive in lootbox-like Cases, which are opened by Keys purchased with real-world currency. They can also be obtained through trading with other players and purchasing from Steam Community Market. Beyond Steam, unofficial third-party marketplaces for CS cosmetics have also popped up as channels for buying and selling items.
>
> Because items are obtained at random through opening Cases, rarer items fetch the highest value on the open marketplaces. Items of lower-rarity tiers can also be traded in at volume for an item of a higher tier via trade up contracts. Previously, Knives and Gloves could not be obtained through trade up contracts, exponentially increasing their value as highly sought-after items. 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.
>
> Following Valve's Oct. 22 update to Counter-Strike, the second-highest-tier, Covert (Red), can now be traded up and turned into Knives and Gloves. Essentially, this means that a previously extremely rare and highly sought-after cosmetic is going to be much more obtainable for those who increasingly want it, reducing the value of Knives and Gloves on the open marketplace. And this is where the market descends into a freefall. Now, that Butterfly Knife mentioned above? It's going for around $12,000, as people are essentially dumping their stock, with 15 sold over the past 16 hours at the time of this writing.
[1] https://www.polygon.com/counter-strike-cs-player-economy-multi-billion-dollar-freefall/
So Ultima Online (Score:1)
Ok so imaginary stuff is not worth what is was before? Did they change the drop rate or something?
I mean it sucks if you just bought a skin, or were about to sell one, but these aren't really assets in a predictable sense.
Clickbait, the other white meat (Score:3)
items that cost more than what the marketplace sales cap are now below the market cap because they are more easily earnable while deleting tons and tons and TONS of items costing $20 before, now $100 from the store.
The "value" erased is like saying a stock on the stock market is worth 2 billion dollars less, but Valve doesn't earn any profit from skins traded via 3rd party sites, and that's what is hit here.
First party transactions are now generating loads of revenue from transaction fees, bringing the market back to Valve and away from sketchy third party sites.
At the end of the day I can't comprehend why people are paying for this stuff though. It's just a texture which you could trivially mod in before, at least when I was big into CS in 1.X days and CS:S.
Re: (Score:2)
> At the end of the day I can't comprehend why people are paying for this stuff though. It's just a texture which you could trivially mod in before, at least when I was big into CS in 1.X days and CS:S.
The knife at least might be a different model rather than just a texture, of course still possible to mod that in. I still struggle to wrap my head around what kind of absolute moron would pay the price of a pretty decent new car for a virtual knife in a free-to-play videgame.
Excuse my ignorance ... (Score:2)
Is this article talking real money or in-game money? I don't think someone would pay $20,000 to get some some kind of picture in a game? Doesn't make any sense ...
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Nevermind, I just found the answer and it's depressing: Skinport is the easy-to-use skin marketplace for CS:GO/CS2 items that allows you to buy and sell CS:GO/CS2 skins for real money. . People are either dumb or use stolen money.
Re: (Score:2)
Both. Most people are dumb, and many would use stolen money if they could (and many do, though usually not to buy video game cosmetics).
Intelligence and morality are both things that people are born without, and have to learn. Some people are born pre-disposed to be good at learning (be that knowledge, virtue, or both), but even so, if they are born into unfortunate circumstances then the things that they will learn will be wrong and harmful.
So, in order to reach adulthood with sharp intelligence and a fu
Re: (Score:2)
If you're not dumb and have stolen money, these types of exchanges are ideal for money laundering.
Re: (Score:1)
A quick search says it is real money and 48% of players are aged 18-24.
I had not idea of this situation and this is blowing my mind.
Re: (Score:2)
It's a flex. Same reason people buy $1000 bottles of iffy vodka for their friends in a night club.
Re: (Score:2)
Some people make real money in this "market," or try to. Check this out:
[1] I Spent 24 Hours with CS2 Millionaires [youtube.com]
I'm not saying any of this is real, but I bet some sizable purchases have been driven by dreams of such.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeDB--xe8gM
Never understood... (Score:2)
I've played FPS games since the original Doom was the hot new thing, and I've never understood why anyone would pay real money for cosmetic player doodads.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand it, but then I don't understand NFTs, or crypto, or any of those fads that make people pay money for 0s and 1s sitting on someone else's computer. As for skins, I'm all for it if that means companies can make great F2P games with no pay-to-win element.
There's no real artifical scarcity (Score:2)
> I've never understood why anyone would pay real money for cosmetic player doodads.
Same here - but only don't understand why people would pay such an exorbitant amount of money for it; I think there's value in paying a small fee because someone took the time to crate it (time is money), but there's no real "scarcity" of the thing, it's all artificial, which is where these crazy figures come from.
Re: (Score:2)
I don't understand why people spend a lot of money on tennis shoes or a great number of other things either.
Similarly....most people probably don't understand why I have a $2000 pool stick.
Re: (Score:2)
I understand why people would pay a little bit of money but not a lot of money
If you play the game 10-20 hours every week. It can make sense to spend 5 bucks a month and get new skins. The game looks a bit more fresh this way
Even $30 would not make sense to me.
Am I reading this correctly? (Score:2)
People are/were paying $20,000 in actual U.S. dollars for some item in an online game?
Am I reading that correctly?
Re: (Score:2)
And get this: The item does *not* affect the gameplay!
Re: (Score:2)
Well, that's just silly.
Who are these people??
Anybody who spends... (Score:2)
$20,000 on a Doppler Ruby Butterfly Knife is a strong contender for gold in the olympics of stupid wastes of money
Re: (Score:2)
Or laundering.
It's things like this (Score:2)
why I nominate the Darwin award to humanity.
There is No "Player Economy" (Score:2)
There is no economy for standard **game playing**. No one's games or game playing are being affected.
Instead, there is an unsupported, unsanctioned black market economy for the use of real money to buy cosmetic decorations in the game. And it's not like many people wants to pay these market-manipulated prices to USE the skins... it's a purely speculative market that's maybe 1% more rational than trading NFTs.
Type of headline that should be prohibited (Score:2)
"Erased $$$ in market cap" just means "Value of thing was X, now value of thing is Y which is less than X"
It's so damn misleading.
Re: Type of headline that should be prohibited (Score:3)
The closer to zero that market cap is, the more correct the valuation.
CS is a joke (Score:2)
CS used to be awesome in it's first incarnation. Cheaters and everything else ruined it. It was awesome when you could get on a server with your friends and have a fair round. If I have to play for in game items, I'm being played. Lootboxes are a serious joke. If you need to gamble, stick with pokemon cards.
Promoting gambling to kids (Score:3)
Why is this even allowed?
Re: (Score:2)
I guess Pokeman cards were just too tangible.
Re: Promoting gambling to kids (Score:2)
It prepares the youth for capitalism
Re: (Score:2)
> Why is this even allowed?
Because (optional) Daddy and Mommy were quite busy with online gambling?
You act like it ain’t junkies raising junkies these days.
Doesn’t matter. A Recession too far denied is the reason for the free-fall. Even Mommy and Daddy’s poker bankroll is drying up, so junior ain’t getting those residuals for gameware.