Author| Akagi bottle
Edit| Mia
One day in March, when Xiao Su, a veteran player who had not logged in to CS:GO for several months, opened the jewelry trading website, he found that the total market price of several sets of cosmetics in the inventory had risen from 100,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan.
According to SteamDB data on March 25, the week after V announced the launch of CS2, the number of CS:GO online users hit a new high, peaking at 1.5 million. The positive news of the upcoming release of Counter-Strike 2 (hereinafter referred to as CS2) and the increasing deal of CS:GO cosmetics since 2022 did not particularly surprise Xiao Su.
Recently, a CSGO jewelry was publicly sold in a third-party market, and the transaction price was as high as 1.09 million yuan. Like the rapid recovery of the performance market, the crazy trinket market has struck with speculators. In this carnival, players no longer worry about the return on investment ratio, spending thousands or tens of thousands of yuan to buy accessories such as popular skins or stickers in the name of "financial management", and at the same time, various derivative industries that "teach you how to start and move bricks to make money" have also emerged. And behind the carnival is much more than that.
"Spending 3 million on a few stickers is not more exciting than buying a sports car?"
"When you buy the game for $98, you just buy a 'shopping cart.'"
"CS:GO" has a more memorable name - "Counter-Strike", a first-person shooter developed by VALVE and Hidden Path Entertainment and published by Valve Software, which was officially released in Europe and the United States in 2012, and the national server was released in 2017 for 98 yuan. Shortly after its release in Europe and the United States in 2012, Xiaosong bought the "shopping cart" of "CS:GO".
Old player Artemisia can also be called the earliest batch of "windfall beneficiaries" of the "financial management product" of "CS:GO". In 2019, Artemisia sold his first game accessory - claw knife - on NetEase Buff (currently the most popular jewelry trading platform for "CS:GO" and "Dota2" games), "claw knife, butterfly knife, these are the more popular accessories in the game."
At that time, the sale price of Xiaosong's "new factory level, tiger tooth claw knife" was 1880 yuan, and the current market price of this claw knife was 8057 yuan. In recent years, the market price of most popular jewelry has steadily increased or even soared. The current market price of the claw knife purchased by Xiaosong in March 2020 for 5988 yuan is 8556 yuan, and the "M4A4 Poseidon Brand New Factory" purchased at 3488 yuan at the same time is now priced at 9330 yuan.
"The jewelry trading of this game has always been like this, and it can even be said that it is not a loss. It's just that the increase in the past two years has become higher and higher, and some popular categories can easily double in half a year. "But there's one thing in my inventory that can't be traded," Artemisia proudly said Artemisia, who got the Decade Veteran Coin.
When he found that his inventory of jewelry had doubled from 100,000, Xiao Su, who realized that the market was in a "frenzy", quickly put several of his "gun suits" with soaring prices on the trading market, with an average price of 20,000 or 30,000. Xiao Su left himself a "dragon snipe" with a current market value of 37,000 yuan, and a few stickers with a price of several thousand to play for a while. "In fact, the jewelry 'wild lotus' that sold for 1.09 million yuan in the news, the most valuable thing is the few signed stickers, and the market price is probably very high."
The "Wild Lotus" sticker entered the game in 2019, and the total number is currently less than 3,000 pieces, and the transaction is a "new factory" level, with extremely low wear and wear, and relatively more valuable. Plus the skin has 4 "Reason Holo" stickers from the 2014 CSGO Major competition, each worth nearly 300,000 yuan. Xiao Song revealed that usually before and after major events, the price of accessories will fluctuate sharply.
After searching for entertainment unicorns, it was found that the highest price product in the current trading market is the AWP souvenir of "Dragon Legend (Brand New Factory)", priced at 3 million yuan. This commemorates the 2015 ESL One Cologne CS:GO Championship. It was dropped during the semi-final match between Fnatic and Virtus.Pro and signed by Jarosław Jarząbkowski, the best performer in the round. Xiao Song told Entertainment Unicorn that the difference between the jewelry with the souvenir logo and other accessories is that the souvenir comes with its own sticker.
When asked if someone would spend 3 million to buy a game sticker, Xiaosong joked, "If you have the strength, you can collect and manage money, which is not much more cost-effective than buying a sports car." ”
"Game brick movers", the many parties behind the carnival for profit
"You don't need to know technology, you don't need to know English, you don't need to work time, you just need a computer or a mobile phone, you can operate it at home." This kind of "part-time job offer" with a deep sense of distrust has frequently emerged on platforms such as game Tieba and so on. They usually call themselves "Steam game brick movers", using the exchange rate of overseas platforms to make profits, buy high and sell game props to earn the difference. In addition, young people who are not interested in games, but simply use jewelry trading as a way to stabilize their finances, are also entering in large numbers.
Take the NetEase Buff platform as an example. This kind of "brick moving teaching" also mentions the platform mechanism: the handling fee for withdrawal is fixed at 1%, the minimum charge is 2 yuan, and the rounding up is 50 yuan. That is, the amount of withdrawal multiplied by 1%, the resulting amount is the handling fee, and the minimum handling fee is 2 yuan, and the handling fee below 2 yuan will also mention 2 yuan, but the upper limit of the handling fee for a single transaction is fixed at 50 yuan. The transaction fee charged by the exchange is determined by the game, except for DotA2, the transaction fee is 1.8%, and the transaction fee for other games is 2.5%.
For ordinary players like Xiaosong, the meaning of accessories is more "to play", and the companions around them who are playing such heavy end-games, almost every year will invest in the purchase of game accessories, "When playing games, it looks comfortable, although there are no special effects, some skins may have their own 'kill count' function, but the most important thing is the process of experience." ”
Xiao Su also believes that the coolest time is the moment when the box is opened to open a good gun skin, but this is somewhat difficult and the probability is extremely low. "Perhaps the key point is that whether it is a skin or a sticker accessory, it can only be randomly generated by opening a box, which is an experience like opening a limited blind box." In addition, Xiaosong also revealed that in the related derivative industry of game jewelry, "spinach" (e-sports betting) through jewelry is actually the most profitable means for some traders, but this has touched the gray area, and it is inconvenient to mention it and not advocate it.
The prosperity of jewelry trading and derivatives has led many onlookers to believe that this decade-old game is still active, and the game's jewelry trading function is one of the reasons why the game continues to be popular. Xiaosong does not agree with the view that "jewelry trading feeds back game activity". He feels that "whether it is the jewelry trade or the controversial 'spinach' platform last year, they are more like spin-off industries such as sports equipment born around football and basketball, and the core is the game itself." For Xiaosong, the fun of this game is that "it has not changed significantly, unlike Dota, the tactical play of CS:GO has always changed a lot, and any small change will affect the tactical system of this game." ”
"CS:GO", which makes Xiaosong obsessed with "nothing major", is also about to usher in a transformative upgrade. Compared with the first generation, CSGO2's engine, visual effects, game modes, smoke bomb reforms, sound effects and systems have been further improved and renovated, the game screen and lighting effects are also more detailed and realistic, and more special effects and dynamic lighting and shadows will be added to the game.
For many players, important is the Trinket inheritance system, where all inventory items from the first generation of the game will be transferred to CS2 instead of being recreated when CS2 goes live, and all weapons have been redesigned in HD. This means that trinkets will also bring players a new visual experience, and it is likely to usher in a new wave of jewelry price boosts.
This is one of the main reasons for the boost in the jewelry trading market. After the official announcement of CS2 on the evening of March 25, the game set a new record - a total of 1.507 million people on Steam played CS:GO online at the same time, about 80,000 higher than the previous peak. CS:GO is the second most online game in Steam's history, second only to PUBG Battle Royale, which swept the world that year (with a maximum of 3.25 million simultaneous online).
In addition to NetEase Buff, a large number of game jewelry trading platforms are active in the market, such as IGXE, C5game, Yoyo Youpin and so on. It is worth mentioning that in February this year, there was online news that Perfect World, the Chinese agent of "CS:GO", was testing the official trading app, which triggered frequent discussions among netizens on platforms such as Xueqiu. After the official entry, it will inevitably squeeze the space of other unofficial trading websites, and the related derivative industries with the game as the core will also usher in a shock.
After the fitness ring is difficult to find and "Dongsen" drives Switch into a financial product, "game financial management" in the jewelry trading market such as "CS:GO" is no longer rare, but after meeting the supply and demand relationship, the derivative industry sometimes needs some rational consumption and market balance.