Are the newly bought TF2 keys expected to be untradable in the near future?

[volette1]

Hi,

 

Looking for some opinions on Valve's approach to their economies. They've been making newly bought CS:GO and Dota 2 keys from the in-game store untradable (it's not keys in dota something else). They said it's to “combat money laundering”, but I have a feeling it's more to just force people to buy straight from them, and not the steam community market. Like so, they get more revenue from unboxers, instead of the 15% scm cut. In the process, cs keys have jumped quite a lot, from doubling to even tripling in value in some time.

 

Now here's the thing, in this time, the tradable Csgo keys have big price ranges, and are therefore not really easily sold for the best price fast. Since I don't do csgo trading, I'm not really aware on whether people still use them as is. So is something like this to be expected for tf2? And if so, should we all rush to stock up on these keys like it's hand sanitizer or toilet paper? What are your thoughts

[Beaser]

no

[hyro]

no

[ajdislikesyournamingpolicy]

If they're made untradeable, why would you want to stock up on them? For Steam funds? People just buy keys to unbox now in cs

[Bewitched]

No

[Zeus_Junior]

Doubt they'll be made untradable, but uuhh

 

[HaloGAMER0329]

27 minutes ago, Zeus_Junior said:

Doubt they'll be made untradable, but uuhh

 

massive amounts of keys, case keys, and unlocked crates been bought recently 

[Wsdea]

To be honest, I don’t know why they wouldn’t do it

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

5 hours ago, volette1 said:

but I have a feeling it's more to just force people to buy straight from them, and not the steam community market. Like so, they get more revenue from unboxers, instead of the 15% scm cut

Where do those original keys come from? Valve. Any sale on the scm is an EXTRA 15% of the key's price so from a money perspective it wouldn't make sense to make them untradeable. This is indeed meant to combat money laundering.

[volette1]

1 minute ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

Where do those original keys come from? Valve. Any sale on the scm is an EXTRA 15% of the key's price so from a money perspective it wouldn't make sense to make them untradeable. This is indeed meant to combat money laundering.

thats true, but when new people get to buy keys, they opt for the steam market instead of the in game store, which makes them less revenue.

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

(I was going to edit this top part into my other reply but since volette responded so quickly it's going in this reply)

1 hour ago, Zeus_Junior said:

-snip-

If you zoom out it fits into a trend line https://imgur.com/ErVdpSy.

Backpack couldn't update inventories for almost the past 2 months or so, of course there's going to be a spike in keys discovered.

 

 

3 minutes ago, volette1 said:

thats true, but when new people get to buy keys, they opt for the steam market instead of the in game store, which makes them less revenue.

I don't think you understand that the supply of keys is coming from valve regardless of where new players purchase. If new players are only unboxing from SCM keys then that drives supply down and thus the price would increase but the price generally doesn't increase all that much because the sellers are still getting keys from valve, regardless of how high up the chain of sellers it takes, they all started at valve. In fact if tf2 key population is anything to go off of the sellers are buying more keys than the unboxers use them up.

[Diamond jozu]

9 hours ago, volette1 said:

Hi,

 

Looking for some opinions on Valve's approach to their economies. They've been making newly bought CS:GO and Dota 2 keys from the in-game store untradable (it's not keys in dota something else). They said it's to “combat money laundering”, but I have a feeling it's more to just force people to buy straight from them, and not the steam community market. Like so, they get more revenue from unboxers, instead of the 15% scm cut. In the process, cs keys have jumped quite a lot, from doubling to even tripling in value in some time.

 

Now here's the thing, in this time, the tradable Csgo keys have big price ranges, and are therefore not really easily sold for the best price fast. Since I don't do csgo trading, I'm not really aware on whether people still use them as is. So is something like this to be expected for tf2? And if so, should we all rush to stock up on these keys like it's hand sanitizer or toilet paper? What are your thoughts

the 'dota 2 key' you are referring is an item called 'Arcs or Arcanas'.its not keys but its an item that has consistent and stable price.basically the ear buds for cross trading since its like worth 15$ or more

[ganji man]

21 hours ago, FP jh34ghu43gu said:

(I was going to edit this top part into my other reply but since volette responded so quickly it's going in this reply)

If you zoom out it fits into a trend line https://imgur.com/ErVdpSy.

Backpack couldn't update inventories for almost the past 2 months or so, of course there's going to be a spike in keys discovered.

 

 

 

if this was an issue with loading inventories then this uptick would show up across all items in the game which appears not to be the case. 

 

 

With  the recent rapid devaluation of keys in terms of their refined / real world value I think this is definitely fraud related  

[its raining men]

toilet paper is a necessity, tf2 keys arent so no 

[FP jh34ghu43gu]

3 hours ago, ganji man said:

then this uptick would show up across all items in the game which appears not to be the case.

All zoomed into the original graph's range of ~June 15th to Current date

Refiened

Reclaimed

Scrap

Non-Craft ToD tickets and Craftable ToD tickets

These are the most comparable items to keys since they are constantly bought/made while some of them continue to be used up. Scrap and reclaimed seem kinda flat probably because there was no need for them to disappear during the no update time (ref turned into hats/private storage accounts but you would only smelt your rec/scrap if you got more to replace it), but there is still a decline noticeable with a sharp uptick after caching came back.