hirschy19 said:
The biggest dick move (by valve) has to be that Bots who offer cards for keys, still remain operational. Except now their "customers" will buy keys in store by mistake or habit to trade in for cards, only to figure out that they can't actually be traded. I like to see how the warning text in the CS:GO store looks, or even if there is a warning.
This did happen a couple of time where Valve restricted an aspect of the market without warning, prompting people taking advantage of bots that their owners still aren't aware of the changes.
hirschy19 said:
Let's be honest. This move is just last minute preparation for their holiday sale, where buying keys and reselling them in the market was eligible for sale bonuses, just like normal store purchases. Apparently this will still be the case this year, except that people can't resell these keys right away.
I still believe the overall reason for this is for Valve to establish a legal market of items that will be within the laws of digital gambling that might be established in the close or far future. Many of the governments in Europe are pushing for laws restricting the market for microtransactions, laws in which Valve will have to abide by eventually. Instead of Valve being caught out of nowhere and making sudden changes of their entire market possibly causing a lot of issues with their userbase, they are preemptively cracking down their market so it can already be established in the future when digital gambling laws will be passed, as they restrict market features gradually like they are doing it now, instead of suddenly.
hirschy19 said:
It's still hard to imagine why anyone would pay more than store price for the key ultimately. For traders it may be worth slightly more because they can sell these keys on their own websites for real currency, cashing out their steam wallet funds for real money. How big of a hit they are willing to take for this remains to be seen. 1.5x? so about half?
Just don't believe this horseshit about artificial scarcity, cut off supply and collectors items. Collectors have to be the dumbest people, so while i wouldn't put it past them to collect keys, it's hard to imagine them resisting to use the key to open crates or do so accidentally.
That's how i made money on steam, on the base of people that don't know how to spend their money better, where they spend them on a digital item that has no use whatsoever. The appeal of these keys is that they are marketable and tradable, that in itself gives them value. The increase of price is already seen everywhere (as of now):
The CS GO Case Key went from 2€ to 20€:
https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/730/CS%3AGO%20Case%20Key
CS GO Capsule key, from 1€ to 12€:
https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/730/CS%3AGO%20Capsule%20Key
I do not see a scenario where these keys will go down in price, other than various short burst instances of people with lots of keys dumping large amount of supplies of them on the market.
But this is it, the supply is completely cut off. These no longer have an infinite resource to circulate on the market. Their numbers will only go down as months and years go by. This looks like a perfect opportunity to invest. Long term investing over the span of months/years is the safest way to make money, and unless something new happen on the market that prompts these keys prices to change (which might, but such is the risk of investing) then all i see them in the future is having outrageously high prices, more than myself and yourself are comfortable to ever justify spending money on, but also enough for us to know that there will be people out there who will be spending money on these keys.