Topic: Counter-Strike Skin Economy (Read 460 times)

Honestly this is not that much different than what we see in this market as well, a new coin is announced and this creates some hype, then many so called investors put their money in that coin hoping it skyrockets, the majority of the them pick the wrong coin or sell their coins for a loss with only a small portion of the people being lucky enough to pick the right coin and still keep their coins when it skyrockets, so anyone thinking on doing this kind of ‘investment’ regardless if it is in an ico, ieo or items from a game should do it at the beginning of the life cycle of the ico/game and not at the end of it where the chances of getting back your money are basically zero.

As per your attached picture, I see that the number of players is already going down, with most of the countries terminating their lockdown it means a lot of them would stop playing and the ones that kept would spend less money as they have outside activities they can empty their pockets for. In an extreme bearish case, you could also consider players trying to recoup some of the money by selling stuff so they can have some cash for the incoming summer season, and all the expenses that come with it, hotels, clubs, booze, etc.

Yeah, buy low sell high, when there is blood on the streets, but it just might be that this new low is higher than the future normal high.

I was playing a lot some time ago and I bought new cases and skins from time to time. Concerning the cases, I would'nt say I was "investing", I guess "gambling" would be the better term. And to be honest, I opened several cases myself too within the last years (catched a few rare knives, yaaay...).


I sold many cases and I kept some until today, but I honestly don't want to go into detail here.

Have this kind of mindset but when CSGO was still starting to gain popularity or do make up some hype then thats the time you do consider to gamble out
on buying out some skins or items but most of the time i do make use of it for my own and then later on i do sell off when its not needed anymore.

This should how be done where we should only invest on the amount that we can afford to lose.Im also a heavy top-up player but can still able to profit out
when i do sense that a specific game would able to pass out or would lose its popularity(im talking other games specially mmorpg.)
When you do able sell out some trash wayback then thats a good thing as long you dont invest too much into these cases.

Wasn't sure if I should post it here at first. So i am glad that you guys are interested in this topic.

For me it were the Operation Breakout Cases, too where I first realized how big this market is. I earned (and traded) them a few years back when I was actively playing the game. And now when I reinstalled the game and checked my inventory, I saw that they are now worth around $100. Sure, that's not much but still quite remarkable considering I though they were trash back then. Putting only some small pocket money into these cases would've been great (retrospectively).

Did you buy your cases specifically as an investment? And you said you sold them already. Does this mean you sold-off your investment completely?

Ha, didn't know there will a day I'm talking about CS:GO items and skins economy on bitcointalk. But anyway, from my history with CS:GO so far (from 2015) and Valve's history, I don't think invest in CS:GO items and skins in 2020 would be a smart move. Mainly because CS:GO already at the very end of its cycle life and CS:GO 2 aka Source 2 could come out at any moment now. No doubt there are a few years for cs community to accept and transition to the next gen but one it has done, you literally holding items and skins from a dead platform. Very risky, items and skins value tied to cs pro scene with teams, players, and such. Did I mention about only one update from Valve which change drop rate could also f**k your items and skins up?

Ah, very cool topic @Darkoth89. I was actively playing CS:GO from the beginning and buying CS:GO cases for years. And I actually was able to make some decent bucks within the last years. What I usually did, was buying cheap cases for less than 0.05 € and tried to sell them for higher prices a few years later.

Two examples which I bought a few years ago:

"Huntsman Weapon" case bought for 0,03€ in 2014/2015 and sold it last year for about 2€~ each.

"Operation Break Out Weapon" case bought for 0,03€ at the beginning of last year and sold in February for about 0,45€~ each.

Even if I made a decent profit, one has to point out that "investing" in those cases is very, very risky! There are several factors which you cannot control and which could lead to a huge drop in prices, e.g.:

• new games could lead to a huge drop in the playerbase, especially RIOT is creating a new CS:GO competitor.
• new laws/guidelines in several states to prevent online gambling in video games.
• changes in the steam market system.
• third party websites that charge a huge fee, since you cannot "cash out" from steam directly.
• way too many cheaters, which will scare off the regular player.

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On the other hand, one has to say that the current CS:GO playerbase was growing rapidly due the Covid-19 pandemic. So now there might be another opportunity to buy some of the newer CS:GO cases which just fell out of the recent drop rotation. But as I said before, an "Investment" in those cases is absolutely high-risk. If you choose to "invest", you should be ready to lose all your money.

Attached: CS:GO Playerbase:



Source: https://steamcharts.com/app/730

The whole system is build on cosmetic items, if they give you other advantages in the game, aka pay to win, I am sure the game itself wouldn't have become so popular. I know that for most of us here it sounds weird to spend that much money on virtual cosmetic items but there are definitely people out there that buy them as some kind of status symbol ingame and to play with them.

But something else that you mentioned, also came to my mind during my research. The whole gambling problematic with the lootbox mechanics. Players  from Belgium and the Netherlands already can't open lootboxes (since 2018). What could happen when Valve has to change the current system due to legal requirements for more countries?

The skins in CS:GO and most of the online games out there are just for cosmetic or aesthetic values, they do care about the rarity of an item but not much, the centralized economy is a good thing for this types of economy because things could go south real quick with this, I agree that this is not a good investment because prices drop real fast in this game economy and the chances of going up is very low, I do not like the system of cosmetics in most games because you are imitating a gambling procedure like CS:GO where a lot of sites are offering skins for gamble, this economy only prospers through physical trading where people could demand a higher price than their inherent value in the game market.

Items are created by the developers, therefore, users don't actually own it (only rights to use) and they are free to do whatever they want with their creations. I like to remind people about this since it gives them the illusion of owning something that doesn't exist. It's fundamentally different from crypto since we (actually) own it.

Moreover:
Source: https://store.steampowered.com/subscriber_agreement/

It's a risky game if you somehow trade with hacked or sold accounts. However, I know some people occasionally make money from this business (not that much though) just keep in mind with risks that come with it. Just don't get caught, lol

https://www.lifewire.com/sell-steam-games-4582610

The main problem I see with this is more centralized than anything else.

Not only do they control the game, but they can also create items out of thin air, they can lie how many they've put to sale, they can destroy them at will but you also have to take into account how people are attracted to the game and pray nothing better comes out.
Only the last part is a bit related to bitcoin but due to the other main issues with this, I can't see and treat it more than a hobby.

The last game I played seriously that had some sort of this market was Diablo 3, I'm getting too old for those, but at that time, being on of the first players and a D2 addict, I had lots of items, managed to sell them for some real $, I was actually amazed I was getting real money for crap. I Understand that limited items are different, that there are people spending thousands of dollars for them in games but you have to consider the fad effect. It happened with every "collectibles" that went for insane prices, the drop is harder than the fall.

Interesting. You sound like you have some experience with the CS:GO market, already. How 'grown' would you consider the skin market? I mean, do you think the curret prices, in particular the ones of stickers from previous tournaments, are backed by real players who buy to apply them on their skins?

You also mentioned that there is the chance to get your Steam account trade-banned? That would kill the whole investment ... How likely do you think is it to get one just by buying cheap cases in the Community market and tournament stickers ingame? If there is real chance getting your account banned at random, that's an absolute no-go and then I wouldn't put a single cent into all of this. I think, I first played the game in 2015 but so far, I had no issues.

As you can see, I don't really have much experience at all. But it's funny, the more I dig into this, the more parallels to crypto are visible. From the hope that the Chinese pump their money into the market to P&D-like schemes where Youtubers suggest their followership the next best skin/item to invest in.

There are tons of games with this type of idea nowadays but counter strike skin economy is the biggest of them all. There is gambling going on just purely based on skin economy as well where you spend a certain amount and get it back if you are lucky with other skins and not money.

I personally enjoyed eve online for a while for example, and even though you can't really sell stuff in that game for real money, you could sell stuff for real money valued things such as monthly subscription could be bought with in game money and if you are good at what you do in the game, you would be able to never pay for it. Plus some people didn't cared about the rules and still sold big ships for real money as well, which was in thousands of dollars too, so game economy is actually something that is growing ever so limitlessly.

World of Warcraft also has a huge player base and an economy. (or was, last time i checked it was dying)

You can sell the gold you farmed in game and convert it to blizzard euros/dollars directly without needing any third parties.

At some point you don't even have to play the game.

All you have to do is stay in front of the AH and buy low sell high stuff which everybody here has a master's degree at.

I played it for a while but it became boring quickly.

I did hold a lot of valuable in-game items in several MMORPGs when I'm still in NA. Nowadays, I fancy CS:GO and Dota 2 item betting since it's really fun and takes your profit up there as there are tons of traders, buyers and sellers literally everywhere. I testify to the appreciation of value of some skins on the market, notoriously the Titan Holo Stickers, Emeralds, Rubies and Blue gems and the recently-released AWP | Gungnir which saw a massive boost in price over time. While there really is money to be made in hoarding valuable skins and selling them for later, I still think it really isn't a robust and bulletproof way to trade your way up to riches. Youtubers are making massive money for it because they are already known, and the issue of trust doesn't apply to them, take for example, Anomaly which is a known cheapskate in the trading business. Next, as you've mentioned, you have to be reliant on Valve for not making some foolish moves else your money will go down the drain. There are tons of trade-banned accounts even though they did not participate in a scam but rather bought scammed items, so there's also that.

tl;dr: CS:GO skin hoarding, trading and selling is good for a profit source but not really recommended as a main investment opportunity due to uncontrollable factors imposed by Valve.

I don't know enough about it so I'm talking out of my ass here, but if there is a way for someone to create scarcity by buying stuff up (i.e. limited supply, no limits on buying, etc) then I'm quite sure there are speculators driving the market or at least parts thereof.

Be very careful about collectible stuff and account selling for video games since it will be a temporary thing and the Steam and the developers generally don't encourage such business.

If I'm not mistaken, you don't actually own items or accounts since you are only granted rights to use, so technically you don't own anything.

Yeah, wouldn't dream of spending so much money on an virtual item, either. But when you see that there were people paying thousands of dollars for other online items / collectibles, I stopped beeing surprised about what people spend their money for.

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I wouldn't see it as a classical kind of investment anyway. More like some kind of gambling money with high risk but a high potential reward. Fact is, that stickers from previous tournaments would've all left you with more than your initial investment. So I'll probably try my luck and spend a few hundred dollars on these limited stickers when the next tournament is around the corner. Then forget about the game again and be surprised when checking the prices later on. One way or the other ...

Right now I am just not sure if the current prices are caused by the popularity of the game itself and by players who buy skins to play with or if the price is driven by people who only see it as an investment.

Counter strike skins market is a pretty huge one and a rich source of income for the company and they will do everything to protect that. That's the reason why gaming companies are so competitive in releasing new updates and they always listen to the player feedback as they know that it's the players that should be served, if they do good service then their players will also support the company.
Also many a times there are skins that are very cheap in price but when a streamer or pro player starts using it in their game then the demand for that also increases so does the price.

Especially right now I mean last couple months while all skin traders and crypto traders are active and trying to make best out of this lockdown situation.
People do treat everything here not like an investment