Valve have decided to take a bold move when it comes to dealing with their virtual economies by banning the trading of crate keys in Counter Strike: Global Offensive between players due to them coming across data that suggested the keys were being used by illicit companies for money laundering schemes.
This marks an interesting point of Valve getting directly involved in the economy of their games as something like this hasn’t happened since the crash of the TF2 economy. As someone who doesn’t play CS:GO I must admit I am not too familiar with how the economy works in the game but from what I know of TF2’s system they use their crate keys as a type of pseudo currency to exchange between players for goods and to determine the value of certain items. If that system is the same in CS:GO then this will be an absolutely massive detriment to the in-game economy.
It’s interesting to see Valve suddenly getting so involved without warning but I suppose that’s just like Valve nowadays being silent until a direct issue arises upon which they take drastic action. All I know from this is that if you are at all involved in the Counter Strike virtual economy then maybe now is the time to cash out.
That’s all for now, and as always. It’s not just a game, It’s a Life.