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I'm not that sure about Valve. What they actually have for hats now is a system that withdrawals short of casino — you can't buy the thing you want, instead, yo

I'm not that sure about Valve. What they actually have for hats now is a system that withdrawals short of casino — you can't buy the thing you want, instead, you buy a "crate" that may (randomly) contain it, or other item. My thinking is that hats aren't that profitable without these kinds of tricks, and Steam effectively sponsored everything that happened at Valve before they implemented "gambling".

emp_zealoth 10y ago
You do realise it is completely backwards, right? The crates were first to arrive, only after that the real money market came along. Sure, the boxes themselves were a little scammy, but it was not like it meant anything gameplay wise, unlike most of in-game purchases ever - where you have to continually feed money to be able to keep up
- elmigranto 10y ago
  Not sure what you mean by "real money market", Steam Community Market? Or ability to put in money for creates in TF2? Because in TF2 you first would randomly receive items for just playing or achieving certain goals. Then they added creates which would also randomly drop and you'd need to buy a key to unlock some random stuff inside. Not sure on current situation, haven't played for years now. In the beginning of Dota 2, you were able to buy item directly, now you either need to go to Commumity Market, or buy crates from Valve. Check out dota2.com/store — there is either half a year old sets, or crates for new ones. Even older items are not in the shop and I believe w/ever you unlock from crates is not tradable for quite some time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be no way to buy particular items directly, at least not newer ones. (Exceptions are $30+ arcana quality sets which bring a lot of money as they are, so no need to increase price with "gambling".)
imtringued 10y ago
You can generally buy the majority of items you want directly and it's often actually cheaper than buying 200 crates to get some item with a 0.5% chance.
- elmigranto 10y ago
  Check out TI treasures. There are only crates. No?
Svenskunganka 10y ago
I get where you're coming from, but this is definitely not the case. Valve recently banned all gambling sites from using their APIs, so they're all shut down by now. And if you refer to crates of random items as gambling, they've also filled in that gap with the Steam Marketplace where you can buy individual items for market-dictated prices from other Steam users, where Valve takes a portion of the money the items are sold for. This business is extremely profitable. Looking at their game Dota 2 for example where they recently hosted the world's largest e-sports tournament, where the pricepool were completely funded by the players of Dota 2 through in-game virtual items. This pricepool were over $20,000,000 USD, funded through in-game purchases where 25% of the items price would go to the pricepool, and the rest would go to Valve. That is $60,000,000 USD that Valve profited in the span of two months, for one of their games, in one of their tournaments. Valve hosts 4 tournaments per year for this game. Looking at the pricepool of their previous tournaments ( http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments ), we can see that this amount just keeps increasing year after year.
- elmigranto 10y ago
  My point is that what Valve does with in-game items is similar to what certain mobile games do with time/pay-walls and how casinos exploit certain aspects of our psychology. And if you do not practice this "shady stuff", it is not that profitable… # Crates Crates or doubling, tripling, etc. item's cost. Say I want a certain hat, on average, I'll need to pay multiple times (crate contains 5 other items, but successive crates do not yield duplicates in most recent Dota 2 versions, so worst case you pay 6 times a price). # Steam Marketplace Adds at least 30% to item's cost, since you buy with real-world dollars, but sell for "Valve Dollars" (only usable in Steam, no withdrawals), this is effectively paying more for a single item (at least 30% more expensive which is Valve's margin for Steam purchases of non-Valve titles). In addition, Valve makes purchases non-tradable via Marketplace for a period of time (multiple months, usually) since original purchases for "preventing fraud". I see it as "incentivising gambling with crates", though. # Third-party site These were probably shut down because they involved real money, so Vavle could be potentially helping organise casino/bookmaking businesses from legal standpoint. It's all fine with Steam Money from marketplace. So, yes, it is extremely profitable, probably orders of magnitude more profitable than "honest" selling where transaction is "pay money, receive item". # Regarding TI It is incredible how much money it made. It is as incredible as how Valve decided to split matchmaking pool for months with International Ranked to boost prize pool, so you had to pay $10 to go into faster queue.

emp_zealoth 10y ago

You do realise it is completely backwards, right? The crates were first to arrive, only after that the real money market came along. Sure, the boxes themselves were a little scammy, but it was not like it meant anything gameplay wise, unlike most of in-game purchases ever - where you have to continually feed money to be able to keep up

elmigranto 10y ago
Not sure what you mean by "real money market", Steam Community Market? Or ability to put in money for creates in TF2? Because in TF2 you first would randomly receive items for just playing or achieving certain goals. Then they added creates which would also randomly drop and you'd need to buy a key to unlock some random stuff inside. Not sure on current situation, haven't played for years now. In the beginning of Dota 2, you were able to buy item directly, now you either need to go to Commumity Market, or buy crates from Valve. Check out dota2.com/store — there is either half a year old sets, or crates for new ones. Even older items are not in the shop and I believe w/ever you unlock from crates is not tradable for quite some time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but there seems to be no way to buy particular items directly, at least not newer ones. (Exceptions are $30+ arcana quality sets which bring a lot of money as they are, so no need to increase price with "gambling".)

imtringued 10y ago

You can generally buy the majority of items you want directly and it's often actually cheaper than buying 200 crates to get some item with a 0.5% chance.

elmigranto 10y ago
Check out TI treasures. There are only crates. No?

Svenskunganka 10y ago

I get where you're coming from, but this is definitely not the case. Valve recently banned all gambling sites from using their APIs, so they're all shut down by now. And if you refer to crates of random items as gambling, they've also filled in that gap with the Steam Marketplace where you can buy individual items for market-dictated prices from other Steam users, where Valve takes a portion of the money the items are sold for. This business is extremely profitable. Looking at their game Dota 2 for example where they recently hosted the world's largest e-sports tournament, where the pricepool were completely funded by the players of Dota 2 through in-game virtual items. This pricepool were over $20,000,000 USD, funded through in-game purchases where 25% of the items price would go to the pricepool, and the rest would go to Valve. That is $60,000,000 USD that Valve profited in the span of two months, for one of their games, in one of their tournaments. Valve hosts 4 tournaments per year for this game. Looking at the pricepool of their previous tournaments ( http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments http://www.esportsearnings.com/tournaments ), we can see that this amount just keeps increasing year after year.

elmigranto 10y ago
My point is that what Valve does with in-game items is similar to what certain mobile games do with time/pay-walls and how casinos exploit certain aspects of our psychology. And if you do not practice this "shady stuff", it is not that profitable… # Crates Crates or doubling, tripling, etc. item's cost. Say I want a certain hat, on average, I'll need to pay multiple times (crate contains 5 other items, but successive crates do not yield duplicates in most recent Dota 2 versions, so worst case you pay 6 times a price). # Steam Marketplace Adds at least 30% to item's cost, since you buy with real-world dollars, but sell for "Valve Dollars" (only usable in Steam, no withdrawals), this is effectively paying more for a single item (at least 30% more expensive which is Valve's margin for Steam purchases of non-Valve titles). In addition, Valve makes purchases non-tradable via Marketplace for a period of time (multiple months, usually) since original purchases for "preventing fraud". I see it as "incentivising gambling with crates", though. # Third-party site These were probably shut down because they involved real money, so Vavle could be potentially helping organise casino/bookmaking businesses from legal standpoint. It's all fine with Steam Money from marketplace. So, yes, it is extremely profitable, probably orders of magnitude more profitable than "honest" selling where transaction is "pay money, receive item". # Regarding TI It is incredible how much money it made. It is as incredible as how Valve decided to split matchmaking pool for months with International Ranked to boost prize pool, so you had to pay $10 to go into faster queue.