Valve has finally killed Counter-Strike. CS:GO
container keys bought from this day forward
will no longer be tradeable between accounts,
or sold on the community market. RIP the game.
They have been trying to kill it for years.
First by banning gambling sites, then by bringing
back Vertigo, and just earlier this month
they had another crack at it by featuring
2 FAMAS skins in a single case collection!
But this time I think they’ve well and truly
cracked it.
The banning of key trading was done, they
claim, because the feature was being abused
by fraud networks to liquidate their gains.
Tax evasion! Or avoision. Or avoidance. One
of those! I forget which. But we know the
true reason, don’t we.
Valve doesn’t care about Counter-Strike.
They hate us and want us to leave. Take up
your pitchforks- the world is ending. Spam
the comments section with ‘CS:GO IS DED’.
And don’t forget to like and subscribe.
…Or perhaps don’t do that. That would
be a terrible idea! Instead, let’s take
a deep breath and have a look at what’s
happened here. You can still buy keys. You
can still unlock containers with them… which
kind of was their original intended purpose.
I think Valve were inviting trouble by making
them tradeable in the first place. In fact,
I think the whole case unboxing system was
inviting trouble in the first place, but whatever.
You can still play CS:GO if you really want
to as well. Just saying!
It’s clear that keys were used for things
other than their primary intended purpose
of unboxing cases, and that communities built
up around those other uses. It just so happens
that ‘worldwide fraud networks’ fell into
that category as well, and Valve decided it
was worth removing the feature for that reason,
to try and take back control of the systems
that they created. Unlike skins, which can
fluctuate wildly in value, keys were useful
to trade because they had a set value. More
or less. They still went up and down by a
few percent, but I think you’ll agree they
were relatively fixed in value compared with
skins. That is… UNTIL TODAY!
Before now at least, there wasn’t much point
in selling them for below market value (Unless
wanting to make a quick buck at a loss FOR
SOME REASON!). Its use as a currency of sorts
could be used for good, and -as Valve is claiming-
for bad. So they stopped it.
They acknowledge that some legitimate users
will be impacted, but insist that for the
‘vast majority of CS:GO users who buy keys
to open containers, nothing changes’. The
game won’t die for you.
For the rest of you, you’ll have to find
some other digital currency. Maybe TF2 keys.
This may be the boost the game needs! And
you guys complain Valve ignores that game.
And hey, if you have feedback or concerns
about the change, then feel free to email
them at CSGOTeamFeedback@valvesoftware.com
with the subject “Key Restriction”. If
nothing else, take solace in the fact that
Valve has given you an official way to contact
them… which is more than they’ve given
to the skin makers.
What will happen to the value of the keys
that are still tradeable? Now that Valve are
cracking down on the feature, it could go
down. Or it could go up, now that Valve are
cracking down on the feature. I’ll wait
to see what happens, and will tailor my future
narrative accordingly. I suggest you do the
same. It would be embarrassing to speak with
certainty, only to be wrong.
I remember a lot of youtubers saying that
the gambling ban would kill the game and devalue
all of the skins. But you know what? For many
items, it had the opposite effect. And what
with CS:GO’s playerbase currently being
bigger than it’s ever been before, I guess
they were wrong about it killing the game
as well.
Maybe next time, Valve. Perhaps, if you really
want to kill the game DED, then you should
bring back Cbble with no changes. Or introduce
a new sniper rifle. Or roll out Source 2 with
all the bugs a new engine would come with!
Yeah, that should do it.
RIP key trading.
Oh and this update also fixed a UI bug.
