[gquere]

They did this to take a bigger cut of the market because most trades happened off-platform. This new update ensures that they will sell more of their new items through their shop (contract cases) because it's going to be the only way to get the red items to fuses into "valuable" knives. They're rotten to the core.

[Bengalilol]

Any market maker, such as Valve, is free to establish the rules of its own "reality".

I understand your analysis, and I certainly failed to mention that point, but making the overall value less attractive to speculators is not evidence of being "rotten to the core".

[gquere]

They're running an online casino directed at children and have made specific adaptations to bypass legal regulations in several countries.

[cturner]

Valve is not the market-maker here, they are the exchange.

[sellmesoap]

Trades happening off market is also due to valve not having a way to cash out. If you sell your $20,000 item on the steam marketplace that's a lot of games you can buy, but they won't send you money.

[dpoloncsak]

FWIW, people were purchasing Steam Decks with the "Steam Money", then reselling the console for cash.

Its still not "cashing out", but I'm sure some made some decent money. I would assume you could sell game keys to those less-than-reputable sites as well? Dunno

Agreed overall though, these are just extensions of "happening off-market"

[Xss3]

They warned the gambling sites plenty of times. They tried legal action several times. Those sites were against valves ToS.

[abejfehr]

It seems to me that they (Valve) are complicit. Don't they provide the API that those sites use?

I don't think they tried very hard to shut them down, they could be doing a lot more.

Edit: based on what I recall from this Coffeezilla video (https://youtu.be/13eiDhuvM6Y?si=GJ_kXOJyXFTogy40&t=476)

[__alexs]

> most trades happened off-platform

I thought it was impossible to trade off platform? All item trades happen within Steam, they have an API to facilitate it and everything.

[Sebb767]

It would be more correct to say that most _payments_ happen off-platform. They still use the Steam API for trades, but it's just bots trading with players for nothing and payment is facilitated offsite.

[Hnrobert42]

How does this make them rotten to the core?

This is a business. They invented the game. They host it. How are they rotten for wanting to make money from it?

These aren't real objects. They are entry in a Valve database. I can't understand why people get emotionally, much less financially, invested in it.

[gquere]

Read up on the story, look at the influencers promoting it and the ecosystem that grew around it. Valve is willfully running a casino for underage and have bypassed local laws that protect against this using technicalities. It's frightening.

[raspasov]

Yeah… It’s like NFTs with 100% centralized supply and control, if I’m understanding this niche market correctly.

Control, as in, tomorrow Valve might decide that some of those items are “unusable” in their game which would presumably also crash their value.

[aklein]

Humans are social-emotional beings who assign “irrational” value to things for social signaling and emotional (self-)gratification.