How Video Game Cosmetic Items Became An Economy

How video game cosmetic items became an economy.

Naturally the desire and demand has spread accordingly. Everyone would want an unusual item, while commons were just used as small change.

However, because of miniscule chances of dropping rare (10% and lower) items from crates made crates unstable producers, it led to rarity (and therefore price) being in a reverse relationship with amount of items (“product”) available rather than a direct one.

This became even more apparent, as Valve centered the in-game economy around a new addition – Steam Community Market. People could sell and buy their cosmetic game items for real money. There was only one important note – the funds were in a closed space, you could add money to your Steam Wallet using any payment system or your credit card, but there was no way to extract money out of Steam, so you had to buy games or cosmetics to use it. Valve continued to make profit out of it – 15% of each Market transaction.

Several new things were added, modifying the quality, and therefore rarity of cosmetics, making the best possible combinations almost impossible to obtain. People were willing to spend 100€ on keys, chasing the 0.1% chance of dropping an extremely rare item with all the additional effects and features.