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Valve invents new Counter-Strike 2 loot boxes that successfully dodge anti-gambling regulations (www.pcgamesn.com)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/pcgaming@lemmy.ca
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[–] 67 points 1 year ago (27 children)

Who is buying these skins. I feel like such an alien sometimes. I just can't understand wanting to spend any money at all on a cosmetic skin

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  • [–] 27 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    Before this shit existed (like back when the hottest shit was Quake), I thought it might be cool to get a professionally made skin everyone in the game could see for like $0.25-$0.50. A dollar, at most.

    The first iteration of a system that could have potentially made that a reality, the things you'd actually wanna buy were $25-50. Like who the fuck workshopped these ridiculous prices?

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  • [–] 13 points 1 year ago (10 children)

    I wouldn’t spend money on skins in most games but Counter Strike is different. You can buy a skin, use it for years, and then sell it for more than you paid. In fact, skins are actually a very good investment that have historically had less volatility and better returns than stock indexes like the S&P 500.

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  • [–] 7 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    These skins have 15% returns? That seems dubious but it could be. I don't think you can sink $300k into skins like you can vanguard, though.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I don't think you can sink $300k into skins like you can vanguard, though.

    There are skins worth millions, so definitely you can.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Game developers hire economists and psychologists to run experiments on the precise ways they need to design their games to make people feel like they need skins and other cosmetics and spend money on them. The games are designed to nudge people into associating having good skins with being good at the game and having the default skins with being bad at the game, and to make people want the new skins and feel bad for not having them. Furthermore, they don't really make money on the average person who either doesn't spend money on loot crates or maybe spends a bit of money every now and then- the real money makers are a tiny percentage of players who have some bizarre compulsion to spend absurd amounts of money on this stuff. These are known as "whales" and a lot of them have legitimate psychological issues that cause them to be like this or they're like Saudi nobility who just have absurd amounts of money and don't give a shit about blowing it on fake video game stuff.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    To put it into perspective the player model shown when high level players play while have flashier animations which not only look cool but make the player look extremely nimble, it's hard to explain but you just look way better with skins on to a point where players do make weird associations like "karambit is an awp skin"

    the reason why in the aforementioned association is because after firing the awp (bolt action sniper) players will draw their knife instead of waiting for the bolt to be reset.

    the draw is animated and on the karambit, the draw is exceptionally flashy, since this is frequently done as a legitimate technique (you move faster with knife drawn in cs) then people see the flashy karambit animation very frequently

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago

    People who never used fpsbanana or joined a server with a bunch of skins.

    I blame league of legends and then dota. Those things pushed matchmaking into cs and then gamer empowerment into obscurity. Even Microsoft's version of Minecraft that they rewrote you have to pay real money for in order to save more worlds. There is a direct correlation between laziness and stupidity, and paying more.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    Its a free to play game. You put 1000s of hours in why not spend some.money to customise your gun. Money isnt that tight for some people.

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  • [–] 3 points 1 year ago (3 children)

    I guess. I'd rather not throw away my money, even if it's not tight. I wouldn't feel joy about a custom skin. Every time I saw it I would be reminded that I'd wasted money.

    But that's me, not everyone.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    I'll spend like $30 on the weekend getting alcohol and take aways. These add no value to my life beyond the short time I spend consuming them. Spending $20 for a skin that I think looks cool for a gun I really like and often use is an easy choice in a game I got for free.

    Its hard to explain for someone that doesnt play but its more than just a skin on a gun when you play competitive games you're expressing your skill as a player in front of an audience of people. Its a way for players to make the gun feel more like their own instead of just having everything look exactly the same. People are playing $80 to play a 1 time play AAA game so for f2p games with infinitely replayability spending some money on a skin isnt a big deal you're just paying devs for the game you love.

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  • [–] 4 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    when you play competitive games you’re expressing your skill as a player in front of an audience of people.

    The first part of your post makes sense, even if I don't agree with it. But this part stands out- buying a skin isn't a skill question. It's just a wallet question.

    Some games have stuff you can only earn via achievements or whatever. I could see being proud of, like, a skin you only get if you get 100 perfect whatevers in a row. But, like, just buying it? But I guess the audience has enough people who are impressed by that sort of thing.

    spending some money on a skin isnt a big deal you’re just paying devs for the game you love.

    Also not to be a negative nerd, but unless the company is very tiny the developers aren't getting much, maybe zero, of that money. Developers get a salary. Stock options, maybe. It's not like a tip jar. Profits typically go to the owners under capitalism, not the labor. "Buy skins to support the developers" might be indirectly true, in a limited sense, but it mostly feels like capitalist propaganda.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Im not saying buying a skin is skill expression. When a player is playing they are preforming in front of an audience, everything is part of how they express themselves. From how they move to how they shoot to the skins on their gun its all player expression. Not everything has to be an achievement to be proud of some stuff you just like because it makes YOUR character look the way you like. I dont know how to convey this idea properly.

    If its a f2p game where cosmetics cost nothing people still choose cosmetics over the default character. This is because your ingame character kind of represents you when you play online.

    For your second part about spending money on games I feel like you are being intentionally obtuse. I dont only care about money going to devs. The game isnt made by just devs. I want it to go to the entire company that produced the game I'm playing. If investors get paid thats good I'm glad they are getting a return on investing in the creation of a game I like. If the game made no money there wouldnt be people getting hired to work on it. A f2p game is exactly like a tip jar no one has to buy anything and if no one buys anything the game shutsdown.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Yeah, I bought a few season passes when I was into DOTA. The main gain from those is cosmetics and some ladder ranking, but realistically it was that I'd played the game a ton for free and felt that paying a bit to engage wasn't a big deal.

    Everyday the thrill of the game wore off for me, but honestly given hours played versus money spent it was probably one of the cheapest investments in entertainment I made.

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