#look at that bad photoshop paintjob | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

anthonymalone-blog · 6 years

Text

Weapon Skins & The Market

Weapon skins are one of the things that people believe “keep the game alive.” This is a feature of the game completely independent of its gameplay, and might be huge to someone who doesn’t even play the game. To many people who don’t know how the market for weapon skins works, it’s very confusing as to why someone might spend thousands of dollars in a (now free) $15 game, even when it doesn’t actually make them play any better.

You’ve probably seen weapon skins in many other types of games: instead of having a default black or dull paintjob on a weapon, a player may have bright rainbows, elaborate drawings, or just camouflage on their weapon instead. Personally, I’ve seen it most in Overwatch and Call of Duty, but many other games do it too, usually with the characters instead.

The Arms Deal Update was released all the way back in August of 2013, and with it, weapon skins were introduced into the game for the first time. As you can see in the photo above, most of the weapon skins remained pretty dull, but at least there was now some level of customization in the game. One of the things that made CS:GO’s system unique was its weapon cases.

In these cases (the photo above is of one released less than a week ago), players are basically gambling with their money, since it costs at least $2.50 to open, and the chances are heavily against them. With old cases, the demand for the skins it produces is much lower, because so many people have already opened that case and obtained its skins. Almost every time, you’ll end up not making your money back, which is actually possible if you’re lucky.

One of the reasons that the system is so popular is because of its own economy. Notice how in this list of Steam’s most popular community market items, all but the very bottom are from CS:GO, the top 2 being the 2 most recent cases, which are still in pretty high demand. When you compare it to a case like Chroma 2, one of the most popular ones from the past, the skins from these 2 cases are much more rare, and generally they’re much more colorful, too.

For example, the M4A4 emperor. Because its one of the rarest items unique to the Prisma case (only out for a few days by now), the chances of you seeing it in game (especially in good condition, which I’ll touch on in a second) are very low. Also, like I just mentioned, it has much more color and a much more elaborate design than many of the simple camouflage ones released 5 years ago. This is because CS:GO’s new skins are mainly placed by Valve into the market through their playerbase.

Members of CS:GO’s community can create their own skins (using Photoshop on a very weirdly laid out image, seen above), and the ones liked most by the community are seen more often by Valve, so having your skin be liked by the community could make it appear in the game, but the chances are very rare. Because of this competition, the artists of CS:GO’s community are battling it out to make the best, most colorful, and most elaborate skins. If this concept wasn’t in place, we’d probably still be getting dull, camouflage instead.

Anyway, back to cases. There are 2 main types of cases, one using keys and the other one not. The ones you’ll usually see on the market, like the Prisma Case, Danger Zone Case, and the Chroma 2 Case, are unlocked using keys, which cost $2.50 to buy from valve (or about $2.70 through a player on the market). The others are usually Souvenir packages, where usually only 1 comes to mind.

During competitive, pro scene CS:GO tournaments, players watching can receive Souvenir packages if they’re selected at random. This one, all the way back from 2015, on the least played map, costs $82. Why?

Well, this is the case that births the AWP Dragon Lore, which is almost always one of the most expensive weapon skins. These skins, depending on condition, can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars.

Although the Dragon Lore may not even look incredible to some people, it is still sought after because of its extreme price and rarity.

Skin condition can make or break how good a single weapon skin may look.

This is a weapon skin I own personally, and it has the condition of “Minimal Wear.” On the other hand, a Battle-Scarred variant could look like this:

Although this looks quite a bit worse than the regular variant of the Reactor, Battle-Scarred has its moments. Besides being a big meme on weapons as bad as a Sand Dune (one of the most dull skins in the game, costing a few cents (like many weapons)), some people even prefer variants of worse condition on select skins, one of them being the Asiimov.

Although this variant (I found it on the market right now) is pretty banged up, some very rare variants can show up even in the same category of Battle-Scarred. When the wear is so bad, it gets the term Blackiimov, and can sell for as much as the best looking model available.

As you can see, this specific variant has an entirely black scope, barrel, and an extremely scuffed up stock. Because its such a rare variant of an already rare weapon skin, Blackiimovs can sell for a lot of money.

CS:GO’s weapon skin economy may be one of the things keeping the game alive, since updates aren’t as frequent as in other games. Personally, I have a decent inventory, but that isn’t anything much compared to some of the skins I’ve shown today. My best skin, the AK47 Aquamarine Revenge (below) is only a tiny fraction of the price of skins like the Blackiimov, or the Dragon Lore.

But to me, its price doesn’t really matter. I love the skins I have because I think they all look good, and I find pride in finding a weapon skin that can do that at a relatively low price.

Next week, I’ll be touching on grenades, which could take me a few posts to do. In terms of weapon skins, I’ve hardly touched on knives, a huge part of the market, which I may do in the future. See you then!

#CS:GO

0 notes