Virtual economy crash
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Team Fortress 2 hat economy wrecked by crate glitch
UPDATE 7.58pm: As the shadow of hatmageddon continues to loom over Team Fortress 2's trading economy, Valve has taken e…
Team Fortress 2's hat market has crashed and rare items are going cheap
An unconfirmed glitch is wreaking havoc on the community economy.
Team Fortress 2 traders panic as crate bug crashes market
If you want a nice new Team Fortress 2 hat cheap, now's the time because an apparent loot box bug is crashing the Unusual item market.
Supposedly, a bug was introduced to Team Fortress 2 wherein crates are guaranteed to drop "valuable" unusual hats. Meaning the traded price of those crates has soared and the price of those hats was crashed.
Now people who apparently
make their livingspend way too much time trading hats and so forth are in a bit of a panic.There are reasons actual exchanges have heavy regulation, you know. Yet it would still seem to be less of a WTF than bitcoin.
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@kazitor said in Virtual economy crash:
spend way too much time
Hey, if you're making money off of it, you can safely assume your hecklers are just salty.
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@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
Hey, if you're making money off of it, you can safely assume your hecklers are just salty.
It's either that or what you're doing is outright illegal. In this case, the sodium chloride is definitely involved: “the exact actions I was doing before that made me money no longer do so and other closely related actions also effectively open to me are suddenly more valuable instead, this is so unfair! Waaaah!”.
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@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
@kazitor said in Virtual economy crash:
spend way too much time
Hey, if you're making money off of it, you can safely assume your hecklers are just salty.
I suppose my point is that, since it's so free of regulation and could potentially go belly-up at any moment with no real legal consequences, it's extremely unwise to devote amounts of money where something going awry could seriously financially impact you.
As it should thus be more of a hobby than anything, spending significant amounts of time trading hats is, well, "spend[ing] way too much time". If it takes you a week or something to make $20, is there really much to be concerned about?
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Valve has a history of reversing trades, so if you have "real" hats I wouldn't worry, and if you paid for "fake" ones... well, maybe you shouldn't pay real money for virtual things.
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@kazitor said in Virtual economy crash:
Now people who apparently make their livingspend way too much time trading hats and so forth are in a bit of a panic.
if you make your living by trading TF2 hats, you should have been in panic (about your life) already...
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@anonymous234 said in Virtual economy crash:
Valve has a history of reversing trades, so if you have "real" hats I wouldn't worry, and if you paid for "fake" ones... well, maybe you shouldn't pay real money for virtual things.
Ah, but are they fake? Valve screwed up and made something have a 100% drop rate instead of 1%... but Valve also charges real money to open these crates in the first place ($2.50 USD each).
For the time being, they've slapped trade restrictions on all recently unboxed unusual hats and removed them all from the Steam market... but outright removing them from players inventories could land them in all sorts of trouble since they'd just be stealing money from players at that point.
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@powerlord yeah, they'd have paid money and received nothing tangible in return...
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@Jaloopa obvious solution: return the keys too. Maybe add some bonus ones to minimize complaining.
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@Jaloopa said in Virtual economy crash:
@powerlord yeah, they'd have paid money and received nothing tangible in return...
Receiving nothing tangible and receiving nothing are two different things though. The former has perceived value while the latter doesn't.
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@powerlord said in Virtual economy crash:
but Valve also charges real money to open these crates in the first place ($2.50 USD each).
What the actual fuck?!
since they'd just be stealing money from players at that point.
Sounds like they’re doing that already.
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I think I lost the right to judge these people by the amount I've spent on Magic: The Gathering cards (both physical and digital).
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@topspin said in Virtual economy crash:
What the actual fuck?!
Wait til you hear about their $99.99 virtual engagement rings.
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@topspin said in Virtual economy crash:
What the actual fuck?!
That's the point of them - you have to buy loot boxes if you want cosmetic items, except the number you can buy is limited because you're actually buying keys to the crates you already picked up from gameplay.
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@El_Heffe Hats.
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@error said in Virtual economy crash:
I think I lost the right to judge these people by the amount I've spent on Magic: The Gathering cards (both physical and digital).
Jesus man. I knew you were into the whole masochism stuff but I didn't think you were that depraved
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@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
@topspin said in Virtual economy crash:
What the actual fuck?!
That's the point of them - you have to buy loot boxes if you want cosmetic items, except the number you can buy is limited because you're actually buying keys to the crates you already picked up from gameplay.
You can get regular hats just through gameplay, but they're actually fairly rare because Valve put a cap on how much playtime in a week counts towards drops.
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@powerlord Only if you're already a premium user. If you've never bought anything then all you get is the standard infrequent weapon drop.
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@pie_flavor That's true. It used to be fairly common for people to add $5 (aka the minimum amount) to their Steam account and use that to buy a cheap weapon from the in game store. I know some of them were $0.99 USD and the price drops by 25% if you used the "Try it out" feature first.
Buying an item from the in game store also massively increases you inventory size in TF2 (from 50 to 300), so there are other reasons to do it too.
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@powerlord I bought the Gift-a-pult, which was 10¢
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Hey, if people will pay you good money for silly hats in a game, go ahead and charge that idiot tax tot he best of your ability, but keep other sources of revenue available because gaming is notoriously fickle.
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@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
@topspin said in Virtual economy crash:
What the actual fuck?!
That's the point of them - you have to buy loot boxes if you want cosmetic items, except the number you can buy is limited because you're actually buying keys to the crates you already picked up from gameplay.
I think I have two hats (or outfits?) from when I pre-ordered Portal 2. I have no idea what they look like, though, and even back when I played I didn’t care.
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@topspin said in Virtual economy crash:
@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
@topspin said in Virtual economy crash:
What the actual fuck?!
That's the point of them - you have to buy loot boxes if you want cosmetic items, except the number you can buy is limited because you're actually buying keys to the crates you already picked up from gameplay.
I think I have two hats (or outfits?) from when I pre-ordered Portal 2. I have no idea what they look like, though, and even back when I played I didn’t care.
I've got a few TF2 items from playing Poker Night at the Inventory. Supposedly they're worth some Steam Bucks, but I never got around to selling them.
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@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
@powerlord I bought the Gift-a-pult, which was 10¢
They only sold that in the store for about a year.
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@Jaloopa said in Virtual economy crash:
@error said in Virtual economy crash:
I think I lost the right to judge these people by the amount I've spent on Magic: The Gathering cards (both physical and digital).
Jesus man. I knew you were into the whole masochism stuff but I didn't think you were that depraved
MTG is helluva drug. I've had the bad luck to receive Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger in my starter pack. I started buying boosters like crazy hoping for a second card that amazing - but it never happened.
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@Gąska said in Virtual economy crash:
@Jaloopa said in Virtual economy crash:
@error said in Virtual economy crash:
I think I lost the right to judge these people by the amount I've spent on Magic: The Gathering cards (both physical and digital).
Jesus man. I knew you were into the whole masochism stuff but I didn't think you were that depraved
MTG is helluva drug. I've had the bad luck to receive Ulamog the Ceaseless Hunger in my starter pack. I started buying boosters like crazy hoping for a second card that amazing - but it never happened.
Mine was Vesuvan Doppelganger, copying everyone else's best cards, boosting the Merfolk, or joining the Tim brigade. Good times.
That Ulamog thing looks like it would be fun in my (theoretically anti-Black) Black/Artifact deck. Couple of Urza's Lands, couple of Millstones, Kormus Bell+Pestilence, and one big attack+take huge chunks of your deck. Still wouldn't be a great deck, but I liked it in our big group games.
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@Parody The ones that are tradeable are typically worth a few hundred. For Poker Night 1, anyway. Poker Night 2 challenge items are even more expensive.
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@pie_flavor Hmm...
Checks his Steam game inventory.
Maybe I should play some poker in my spare time.
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@Parody It's not as simple as that. Modern ones are untradeable. That's why it's so expensive - there's a finite quantity. Whether your items are worth that are entirely dependent on how far back you got them.
What's amusing to me is when the price of the item is actually much less than the price of the thing that gets you it, for example the Genuine-quality Archimedes being a good five dollars less than the stuffed animal with the code to unlock it on it.
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@Parody said in Virtual economy crash:
Mine was Vesuvan Doppelganger, copying everyone else's best cards, boosting the Merfolk, or joining the Tim brigade. Good times.
That Ulamog thing looks like it would be fun in my (theoretically anti-Black) Black/Artifact deck. Couple of Urza's Lands, couple of Millstones, Kormus Bell+Pestilence, and one big attack+take huge chunks of your deck. Still wouldn't be a great deck, but I liked it in our big group games.
I feel like I just read something about cricket.
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@pie_flavor said in Virtual economy crash:
@Parody It's not as simple as that. Modern ones are untradeable. That's why it's so expensive - there's a finite quantity. Whether your items are worth that are entirely dependent on how far back you got them.
Ah, well. Silly hat economy.
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My best TF2 item is a Tux doll from when Steam got launched on Linux. Don't think it's tradable, though.
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@Atazhaia correct.
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@Atazhaia said in Virtual economy crash:
My best TF2 item is a Tux doll from when Steam got launched on Linux. Don't think it's tradable, though.
They decided not to make it tradeable because the last time they made something like it tradeable (TF2's OSX earbuds) it became a de facto currency for high end trading.
Or at least that's what it seemed like... the TF2 team is notoriously bad at communicating with its userbase. Heck, the tweets from the team about the current situation was the first time anyone had heard a peep out of them in nearly two years.
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@Parody When I first started playing, the meta was chock full of Tims, White Weenies, Goblins, and Green Token Generators. One of my friends' brothers was exiting the game, and decided to give me a Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale -- which basically shuts down those decks cold. Unfortunately, a few years later a roommate's "girlfriend" saw how much it had grown in value and stole it during one of their trysts.
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@TwelveBaud said in Virtual economy crash:
@Parody When I first started playing, the meta was chock full of Tims, White Weenies, Goblins, and Green Token Generators. One of my friends' brothers was exiting the game, and decided to give me a Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale -- which basically shuts down those decks cold. Unfortunately, a few years later a roommate's "girlfriend" saw how much it had grown in value and stole it during one of their trysts.
My boss's son spent $200 on a Counter-Strike knife, sometime last year. I know because said boss spent 2 hours straight complaining about it, to me and to anyone that would listen. I wonder what the reaction would have been to an MtG card. At least nobody plays baseball here, and I haven't heard from hockey-cards in a while either.
Edit:
Clarification: The knife is purely cosmetic. Speed boost happens with any knife.Edit2:
Typos.
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@TwelveBaud said in Virtual economy crash:
Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale -- which basically shuts down those decks cold.
Goddamn. That card shuts down most decks cold.
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@Gąska Ah, the good'ol days when a creature-less deck was a thing of curiosity that almost no-one knew how to achieve...
One of the earliest version of it that I saw actually working (using a bunch of early editions cards) was a deck (blue, obviously) choke-full of various counterspells and assorted. When playing against it, there was a window of 1 turn, maybe 2, when you could play cards (not that they wouldn't be unsummoned or otherwise destroyed later, but at least they entered play). After that, opponents took the habit to tap mana and directly play the card into the graveyard, waiting for the other player to decide which counterspell he'd use to counter it, but knowing it would happen. Although to be honest at least one version of that deck did have one creature to kill, but it got removed later on.
Also, when it became well-known in our circle of players, someone made another one that worked almost as well. When playing one against the other, trying to unravel the pile of spells being mutually countered 3 or 4 times taught us a lot about the arcane rule mechanics of instant vs. interrupt and how that changed in different editions.
