Ban for CS:GO skins – what’s Valve thinking of?

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The last update of CS:GO turned to be very controversial and stirred up the gaming community. On the one hand, it was just another patch of adjustments to some maps (Dust II, Canals, and Nuke). On the other hand, Valve has made a very significant restriction in skins trading, which will definitely affect the whole market for virtual items:

As of now, skins obtained from trade operations are banned for further trading for seven days.

Why has Valve taken such a step? How will it affect lots of gamers?

Who isn’t ready to wait seven days?

The official position of Valve about the restriction is stated in this blog post. The corporation explains everything as attempts to stop scam and fraud in the skins industry.

“Unlike players, these services rely on the ability to trade each item very frequently.” STEAM states.

In fact, the effectiveness of this motivation is very doubtful. The seven day ban will cause some problems for fraudsters, who will be forced into the necessity to bypass the limitation. They will soon manage to do so, as they usually do in one way or another. 

Players will be unable to manage skins in their inventories at will – for example, transferring them to other gamers at any time. The final effect on the industry is unpredictable.

Keep calm and sell skins on Skins.Cash

The community of gamers greeted the news without enthusiasm. Many consider Valve’s decision as a mistake that must be reversed.

The market reacted as markets usually do in such situations – skins prices decreased significantly, and the process continues. There is one view about the speculative nature of this restriction, as if someone wants to collapse prices and then earn nicely when they return to normal.

For us, such a scenario seems rather far-fetched, because the industry is too big to be  controlled by one participant, and Valve is not interested in monopolization of skins trading.

The recent release of new crates shows support of the skins phenomenon from Valve. On Skins.Cash, we see the seven day ban as a controversial step in the right direction. We should absolutely do something to protect gamers from scammers, but we can’t limit their rights to control CS:GO skins and make them wait seven days to trade.

Skins.Cash doesn’t support any kind of panic in the market and will continue to buy skins as usual.

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This article explains how the platform has developed over the past year: “How Skins.Cash Became Better in 2017: New Features and Updates”.