The CS:GO key update and how it can affect TF2

[Zytoep]

The blog post

 

CS:GO recently got an update that made any keys that were purchased untradable and unmarketable. Valve claimed that the keys were being used for fraud and other suspicious activity. 

 

It is very likely that Valve hits the TF2 keys next, as those are also a popular item to cash out with.

[Jean Arthur]

Comeback of buds? 

[Uncle Dang]

22 minutes ago, Zytoep said:

The blog post

 

CS:GO recently got an update that made any keys that were purchased untradable and unmarketable. Valve claimed that the keys were being used for fraud and other suspicious activity. 

 

It is very likely that Valve hits the TF2 keys next, as those are also a popular item to cash out with.

Well yes and no, the thing is that CSGO has many times more liquidity for people buying/selling keys on steam market and elsewhere, so large amounts of money can be washed relatively quickly through throwaway accounts. Marketplace.tf at least appears to be pretty stringent on checking on possible fraud with verifying sellers, and there's barely any volume to buy TF2 keys anywhere else. We'll have to wait and see

 

Although there were also the cute little currency crashes where even TF2 keys were spam bought and flipped on SCM for less than 2 dollars each, so there might be just enough interest in moving similar schemes to TF2. Doubt it would be able to get all that huge though, as again almost all the real-money volume happens through Marketplace

[Keks]

I'm no expert with keys, so correct me if I'm wrong.

 

If this happens, it might benefit by how the values of keys in money will eventually rise due to the limited amount of keys. However, the Key to Ref ratio will also increase and keys since keys now have a limited amount of supply while ref can be infinitely generated.

 

This might bring back other currencies like earbuds which will eventually replace the current currency of keys. If not buds, then I see paint seeing a rise in use

[Uncle Dang]

16 minutes ago, Keks said:

I'm no expert with keys, so correct me if I'm wrong.

 

If this happens, it might benefit by how the values of keys in money will eventually rise due to the limited amount of keys. However, the Key to Ref ratio will also increase and keys since keys now have a limited amount of supply while ref can be infinitely generated.

 

This might bring back other currencies like earbuds which will eventually replace the current currency of keys. If not buds, then I see paint seeing a rise in use

Well based on what I see happening on a bunch of CSGO keys, regular keys probably wouldn't be affected price-wise all that much long-term (there are gigantic amounts already in circulation, people rarely open regular crates, and buying from the in-game store was already very rare). The specialty keys/unlocked crates though, like Gargoyle Keys, could become stupidly expensive for tradable ones since they are usually bought from the store, are rare by comparison, and have the added bonus of ensuring your cool 1:1 Halloween Unusual is tradable right away.

 

I say this since the only CSGO keys that seem to be all that affected are the super rare ones (and Hydra keys since they were broken price-wise to begin with)

 

Edit: as a side-note though, CSGO traders may turn more to TF2 keys as a currency, might pump up the real money price, but uncertain

[Brown]

 

28 minutes ago, Uncle Dang said:

Edit: as a side-note though, CSGO traders may turn more to TF2 keys as a currency, might pump up the real money price, but uncertain

If keys go up in cash value, will everything else go down in key value?

[Uncle Dang]

4 minutes ago, Brown said:

 

If keys go up in cash value, will everything else go down in key value?

well if it's independent of there being a similar increase of interest in buying the other items, then by definition, yes

[BloodyRedstone]

I feel like buds might come back if this were to happen to tf2.

[NoCaloriePepsi]

As much as I like to believe that things wont affect TF2, it probably will. Now that scammers and fraudsters can't use CSGO keys for transferring dirty money, they probably will do the same to TF2 keys since for now they dont have such restrictions, and in turn, ruin things for us as well. Though I can imagine them also using PUBG, H1Z1, or even Dota 2 stuff to continue their laundering, TF2 is probably a next likely target.

 

It's happened before back in the days when the Bundle of Key Gift items gave out instantly tradeable keys, so scammers and the like used tons of alts to fill servers and collect the keys to ell them. Bad apples are aware of TF2 and it's trading loopholes compared to CSGO.

 

All we can do is hold our breath and see what happens next. Just that I don't expect TF2 to get out unscathed again like when CSGO got the 7 day trade hold in 2018. And really how we react to a hypothetical change will be the deciding factor of weather our economy lives on or not.

[mintyyy]

yeah buds would make a comeback, but what about all the dudes with pure keys in their inventory, if i was caught in the crossfire with more than 20 keys pure id literally neck myself because im not able to put money in tf2 often

[h21]

this will be the best time to buy keys, people will be scared  and flood the market

[Flaim]

1 hour ago, mintyyy said:

yeah buds would make a comeback, but what about all the dudes with pure keys in their inventory, if i was caught in the crossfire with more than 20 keys pure id literally neck myself because im not able to put money in tf2 often

I don't think you read the post.

 

They're not making ALL keys untradable, just ones purchased from the in-game store from this point on.

So any key that exists currently on 1. The Steam Community Market or 2. People's Inventories, remains tradable.

[stoutman245]

Considering the general tf2 community as a whole is much smaller in terms of YouTube generated content, playerbase, recognition, PROBABLY Valve's revenue stream, and the overall hype that CS:GO currently receives,  I honestly doubt the same fate would fall upon the mann co. supply crate keys and all other keys of that nature. Let's look back a few years ago (don't quote me on the date here) but in late 2017, Valve implemented a 7 day trade hold on ANY CS:GO items traded in or out of an account to combat forms of fraudulent and deceptive trading. Some thought the same thing would happen to Team Fortress 2 items. It still hasn't to this date. I think most would agree that the cs economy has been and is significantly more consistent and straightforward than Tf2's will ever be. In general, the gap between buy orders and sell orders on csgo skins is quite a bit smaller compared to those on the Unusual market, thus cs:go being the preferred platform to trade on. The only major way I can see this update affecting Team Fortress trading directly are the people who trade all their tf2 items for csgo keys to either cash out or to just move on from tf2. I've seen that happen many times. To reiterate back to my first point again, unless tf2 see's a persistent upward trend in playerbase for a long period of time (i.e. more attention is focused on tf2 by steam users and more accounts being used for illicit activities) or even if we see a spike in tf2 keys being bought and sold on the Steam Community Market which could possibly happen, then I don't think there should be much cause for concern revolving around this matter.

[Slam]

"Omg TF2 is dead! Panic sell everything this is the end guys it's over!"

 

I'd like to see buds become a currency again, the heavily outdated "click and drag items into the trade window" system is a nightmare for trades with more than just a couple pages of items/pure. Even if buds only ended up being 2-3 keys like they are now, it's still way nicer to drag those instead of dragging 2-3x as many keys.

[DanielDee]

10 hours ago, Zytoep said:

The blog post

 

CS:GO recently got an update that made any keys that were purchased untradable and unmarketable. Valve claimed that the keys were being used for fraud and other suspicious activity. 

 

It is very likely that Valve hits the TF2 keys next, as those are also a popular item to cash out with.

The only way it would affect tf2 is if they didnt do this in some way already which thankfuly they do. keys bought from the TF2 store and the SCM already have a cooloff of 7 days regarding purchases. As far as i can tell this was not the case on "some" items in csgo. Like some of the stickers were recently hit with massive fraud influx because they were accidentally made tradeable along with some other items that were accidentaly made instantly tradeable. One item was abused so much a website had to shut down because people were using it for fraud. Redacted etc.. You also have to understand fraud has a very wide terminology, it can mean people using fake CCs or fake profile details, to shifting good to and from say. The key store.... the list goes on and on. and ariston

[Pigeon]

It is obvious if this happens another currency will come up. Either Mann Up Tickets, Buds, any aussie, so basically just liquid items. The more interesting part will be their value. But on the other hand look at the 1 week trade cool down in CS, it never came to TF2. It might be due to the lack of volume of items traded compared to CS or due to the fact Valve doesn't wanna kick a dying horse. 

[Adolf Storms]

13 hours ago, Zytoep said:

The blog post

 

CS:GO recently got an update that made any keys that were purchased untradable and unmarketable. Valve claimed that the keys were being used for fraud and other suspicious activity. 

 

It is very likely that Valve hits the TF2 keys next, as those are also a popular item to cash out with.

2 words;

IT WON'T

[Retarded Asian Programer]

Sometimes, I want to punch Gaben's nuts, so hard 

 

[Uncle Dang]

15 hours ago, mintyyy said:

yeah buds would make a comeback, but what about all the dudes with pure keys in their inventory, if i was caught in the crossfire with more than 20 keys pure id literally neck myself because im not able to put money in tf2 often

if you kept around a large stockpile of keys when something like this happens, you'd probably make 10-20% overnight judging from what's going on with CSGO keys (probably would be extremely short-lived hype though)

 

8 hours ago, DanielDee said:

The only way it would affect tf2 is if they didnt do this in some way already which thankfuly they do. keys bought from the TF2 store and the SCM already have a cooloff of 7 days regarding purchases. As far as i can tell this was not the case on "some" items in csgo. Like some of the stickers were recently hit with massive fraud influx because they were accidentally made tradeable along with some other items that were accidentaly made instantly tradeable. One item was abused so much a website had to shut down because people were using it for fraud. Redacted etc.. You also have to understand fraud has a very wide terminology, it can mean people using fake CCs or fake profile details, to shifting good to and from say. The key store.... the list goes on and on. and ariston

Basically, the only time there was a workaround to the tradability restriction that you are referring to was with this year's Major, you could buy Souvenir tokens infinitely for a fixed price to then redeem for packages, but Valve forgot to put the 1 week restriction on those redeemed packages, so fraudsters went like  and spammed them on cash sites for any price they could get.

 

It really seems dubious that the fraud impact was happening anywhere except third-party cash sites (since by definition, you can't really wash money directly through steam without getting caught within the 1 week window), and the bar for verifying the legitimacy for real-money trades on TF2 is significantly higher, seeing as almost all of it happens through Marketplace. So I don't really see it being that catastrophic to TF2, since it's a smaller and more concentrated market with only a handful of sites that accept cash that are usually very stringent. But who knows, the incentive might be too strong to start spamming keys on cs deals or whatever for 20 cents each, and people will start buying if it's a ludicrously low price (even liquidating 1/10 of the money you steal on a card would be attractive, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility).

 

This was always possible in TF2, but it just wasn't profitable compared to CSGO. Who knows now

[tornzip]

The community market prices of csgo's keys have skyrocketed up to $3 each and even $8. TF2's keys remain unphased, however. It doesn't seem like the market is panicking right now.

[shmeh]

im pretty sure both buds and bills will probably be used as a backup currency valve does the same thing that they just did with csgo to tf2

[creepio]

The key scare is just a diversion to make us forget that it's been 8 1/2 years and there are still no strange Nessie's Nine Irons.

[Pineapple Pizza]

4 hours ago, Barry B. Benson said:

Sometimes, I want to punch Gaben's nuts, so hard 

 

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