Trading is in the toilet

[Fuckie Finster]

Most actual trading is done by soulless robots who will only trade items in exchange for the seller's completely adamant price tag.

I often hear people justify these robots because they're sick of bad offers, hagglers, scammers and phishers, but this shit has always been an obligatory part of trading. I don't care if you're an ancient african selling mangoes outside the Sankore Madrasah or a ramen-slurping weeaboo shilling virtual hats in a dead video game, idiots who offer badly or try to scam you are nothing more than the inevitable dross that seeps out from the otherwise productive endeavor that is exchange of goods. If you never speak to a human being, can't negotiate and every moment of the process is automated then it's not trading, it's a vending machine, and the end result of this automated exodus is a stagnant, lifeless, weak and uninspiring economy. 

 

The people who aren't bots completely fail at the negotiating process anyway and refuse to learn.

Speaking of stagnant and lifeless: being as rigid as an automated robot is precisely as bad as actually being one. It is incredibly common nowadays to find people who put their item up for a specific price in keys and systematically refuse anything that isn't that price (or keys.) If they do accept anything that isn't keys they will demand 30%+ overpay, sweeteners, "easy to sell" items (this term never is never given a definition) and will do everything within their power to wring potential customers with the strength of six million rabbis. Then when the customer inevitably rubs two neurons together and deduces "this seller is trying to fleece me", they leave and the item continues to sit where it is. The item will either be bought for market price in pure keys (extremely rare) or later sell for less than market value in pure once the seller gets sick of advertising it, blatantly devaluing the item. Which leads to...

 

Only excruciatingly rare items interest people or sell (while everything else continues to dip in market value.)

The biggest problem with the TF2 trading scene — worse than bad sellers, scammers, or robots — is that the quantity of items never stops increasing. Unusual items don't expire, can't be spent and never stop being unboxed. The appeal of unusuals has always been exclusivity, or the ability to say "I spent a lot of money on this F2P game so I could wear a hat covered in impossible-to-ignore particle effects while killing you," serving as a replacement for the attitude ordinary hats once conveyed. Now, years later, unusuals have suffered the same fate that plain hats did. They aren't rare anymore. Anybody can obtain one for the price of a trip to McDonalds and as a direct result the sense of exclusivity is dulled. Demand for these hats dies, they end up selling for less just so people can unload them (see above) and the only items anyone desires are ones that are bugged, retired or extremely rare.

 

Desirable items sit firmly in the possession of seller cliques, going absolutely nowhere unless some insane person is willing to pay hundreds, possibly thousands, of dollars in overpay to dislodge it.

Browse the front page of backpack.tf for five seconds and you will inevitably see a listing for some rare item "worth" thousands of dollars. Click on that seller's Steam profile and you are absolutely certain to find their friends list packed with similar sellers, all of whom deal in similarly-priced rare items. Click on the item's stats page and there's a very, very good chance one of those friends gave a "recommendation" for the item's value, up-voted by other people also present on that friends list. The wealth of these cliques varies but their existence is perpetual; they own every expensive item, said items only change hands between one another and the wider community will never touch any of it unless some mad man takes out a second mortgage to buy one. Any item that is bought will then be niggled down to a drastically lower price, because these seller cliques get the final say in what items are worth, and if they can't profit off the item anymore then why should they allow it to remain valuable? 

 

There is no competition for desirable items (or their sellers), nor any way to naturally progress to that level of affluence.

You can argue cliques like the ones I mentioned are an inevitable result of any market and you'd be 100% correct. History has dealt with robber barons in varying ways, from increased government regulation to putting them in concentration camps, and yet it will surprise no one that Valve's efforts to tackle the issue have amounted to dick bupkis. Unusual weapons and war paints (the latest attempt) completely failed to get people excited about particle effects again. So many of these worthless things are unboxed that the market has rejected them, either as end-game purchases or trading material. A vast majority are never priced because nobody buys them. The only ones that ever sell are strange quality or supremely rare FN skins. The items themselves must be spent on singular items, which means war paints will always be more valuable than painted weapons due to offering you such a wealth of choice. And to top it all off, their population spike devalued a lot of already-existing unboxed unusual weapons (that aren't energy orb.)

 

Don't even get me started on unusual taunts.

 

All of the above is horribly depressing and dissuades new participants in the trading scene.

Every passing day Team Fortress 2 looks more and more like lightning in a bottle. It was developed over the course of nine years by a crew of extremely passionate, extremely talented people who knew exactly what they were doing. The core gameplay remains a lot of fun regardless of skill level, every design choice gleams like a million bucks (even random crits) and 11 more years of content updates have yet to tear down the game's A+ foundation. Valve's decision to let the community do its own thing has saved it from a lot of modern game design pitfalls, from toxicity bans to diluting quirky gameplay elements for the sake of esports cancer. In this sense the trading scene is lucky; the actual act of trading might be in the worst place it's ever been, but the game itself is still so enjoyable that players will tolerate its presence.

 

But if that rock-solid gameplay wasn't there? Nobody would put up with this shit. Not a single person would dive into a market environment so inaccessible to newcomers. Who would invest a large cash sum into an economy that's totally constipated, where everything except rare or retired items perpetually and inevitably lose value with each passing second? How do you have faith in a market where Valve can systematically execute an entire branch of item trading with a single dense fart? Why would you ever tangle with crews of traders who communicate, have seniority, hoard all the wealth and can tip the economy however they want? Newcomers experience all of this (or if they're smart, figure it out from a cursory glance) and say "fuck it, I'll just buy the items I want from this soulless robot."

 

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

Sounds good

 

TL;DR

I can't make profit bc I haven't made my steam community profile yet and solely created it to have this view on trading http://prntscr.com/kxuw5f

 

Jokes aside, uh trading is pretty cool, low tier is a hustle, you could try but it won't get you far

Money makes money, idk how you wanna do that, most peeps do this as a hobby or in some extreme cases a living but yeah it'll never be stable but that's kinda why irl jobs exist and stuff instead of trading pixels

 

 

 

[Beaser]

I dont wanna waste my time reading this big wall of text, but the answer is, "what are you doing with your life making a useless essay about this?"

[Serpentine]

You made an alt to specifically post this shit, because you're scared of someone finding your main account and finding out you just suck at trading. If trading was as bad as you want to believe it is; the top 1% would have cashed out long ago. But they havent, and trading is far from "in the toilet". So much easier to blame the game, than to own up to your own ineptitude, right? 

 

I could take the time to break down each aspect of your poorly cobbled together argument, and as to why it is both factually and functionally wrong but truthfully you're not worth the effort. If you really think trading is "in the toilet" why bother writing a wall of text about it? Clearly this is just a poor grasp at attention, how sad. 

 

[NeoXenoZ]

Why are you even complaining? Go with the flow on the market because in the end, you're still going to make profit.

[Svode]

I own a TF2 unusual trading bot and I rarely get ahold of arcane items. 

For the common unusuals I do get, which can have several sellers at times, it doesn't take long to sell those items (In unusual trading time, that is)

Do you know why?

Because the majority of TF2 players aren't rich. They're common people who buy hats and things to either resell on trade servers and the like or keep and build loadouts with.

Many people do add me about items which my bot sells, and I am eager to work out deals with them knowing their interest.

 

Word of advice: I suggest you get off your alt and show a lil patience with what you sell

[demo got the stickys uh]

Damn his argument kinda sucks

[humann]

To be honest I'm not gonna waste my time reading your wrong argument. I started with 10 keys around 1 year ago and I have a ton of profit (without a bot/sharking/scamming). Open your eyes you're noob, you have to make an alt account to make this post because you know that all the trades that you have made are really bad, and you don't want everybody laughting because of your noobness. Try harder or move on and cashout. There's a big missunderstanding with trading, NOT all the people who want to get money from trading CAN, if everybody is in profit who is the one putting the money in the pockets of everyone?

[Clyde]

How many minutes have you wasted writing this

[KERPKEK]

ok

[demo got the stickys uh]

1 minute ago, KERPKEK said:

ok

peak performance

[LSO]

How many "first gen, all class" "quicksales" did you buy after watching thevirtualeconomist before they crashed in price?

[Adolf Storms]

TF2 trading was never meant to be a full-time job, which judging by your essay you take it as serious as. It's a sub-game within a gr8 game. I hate constantly seeing people whine about trading. Blah blah bitch whine moan blah blah is all I hear when I read articles like this. Trading should be fun. Should be a cool hobby at best. Taking it too seriously... well 'get a job and a life , loser' is all that ever comes to mind when I read things like this.

 

Change your way of thinking.

 

Keep this in mind every day during every trade ... ... Every dollar you make is off the back of someone else. 

 

TF2 is a gr8 game with loads of sub-games, sub-communities etc but at it's core it is STILL THE GREATEST GAME EVER MADE  just my 2 cents. Try playing it once in awhile to remind yourself of that. Maybe the greed and salt levels will subside

[JNeb900ThePeril]

Just cashed out most of my stuff, so many faster ways to make money online than trading nowadays

[Diamond jozu]

atleast its better than csgo trading since they've got that 7 days ban

[spoyk]

i have always viewed trading as its own game and form of entertainment rather than just a way to make money. if steam somehow counted my hours spent browsing outpost, marketplace, and backpack.tf, my "game" hours would at least double. sure bots may make things look bleak but trade servers are still alive and breathing, filled with friendly players and interesting trades. the fun of trading has always been the people and experiences to me, which are both far from being stagnant or boring. profit is just a bonus, imo

[🍀Swazzy🍀]

I won't lie, I quite enjoyed reading that. I felt the sweat dripping from his keyboard but can't deny the amount of time and effort that went into this, regardless if its pure bullshit

[Horsestepping]

I don't feel like anything the sock puppet said is wrong.

[Mrs TS]

Do you understand the concept of trading?  There are 3 types, 1 is for fun, 1 is the speculator, and the other is profit.

The first one is exactly like I said, for fun, trading items of equal value and everyone is happy.

 

The second one is a little tricky, and the reason is, only one of the 2 people will profit, while the other person loses value.  Thats the way things work.

So, when the ones that only make profit continue to only make profit, that means theres a lot of people losing value at all times when they deal with said people.  

 

There is the final type of trader, and thats the speculator. Thats someone that sees a trend, or hopes something will go up in value, buys a bunch of them and cashes them in later on for a profit.

 

There is actually a fourth type, which includes scammers, cheats, liars and sharks but.....thats a story for another time.

[aSmallGreenDot]

Stop I'm laughing so hard

[N.J]

Granted, the market now, is not what the market was 3 years ago. The market will always be subject to change, and it's how you (as a trader) can adapt to profit off of this constantly changing market. The market will doubtless go on to change. As for whether there's still money to be made in this game? I started about a year ago, late August, with what I thought was a sick deal off of scrap.tf I bought with 15 keys, I mean my inventory isnt huge but like it's decent, so yeah, the economy isn't dead, and there is 100% still money to be made in it.

[DanielDee]

I sort of get what he is saying. The only thing i can see that is thriving in trading is infinite amounts of quickbuyers increasing the amount of quicksellers because people dont want to pay full price for anything (because their in the tf2 scene for there own benefit) no one elses. Good luck trying to get full price for items if you do get into trading..

[Vrakos Anthrakir]

I like how you say most trading is done by bots, but the bots don't trade with each other, a live person has to buy from and sell to the bots so less than half of trading is done by bots

[flirganovski]

Honestly, i am to lazy to read all this but my advice if you don't have patience then just quit trading. Trading is very slow, hard and you need to know what are you doing, just now i lost 1 key, wrong decision but i won't quit mistakes can always happen. Trading is hobby and you need to love it, profit is not always possible but it is often possible if you have knowledge, time and patience. 

[NoCaloriePepsi]

This is so bad it's funny. Ok Alex Jones, keep rambling about your crazy conspiracy theories on how the top 1% of traders plot to exploit the noobs or how bots are killing trading. Maybe you'll find someone insane enough to yell at the sky with you.