This post has two parts, one being context and the other being the main body of the assignment. The Context portion will be mainly in italics.
Valve is a gaming company that really needs no introduction, with games like CS:GO, Half-Life, Portal, Team Fortress 2, and Left for Dead 2, the company has truly made some of the biggest games with the biggest buzz for hardcore gamers (a sentence that can be seen as the company's value proposition). The most important of these core games being Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Originally planned to be a console port of their game Counter Strike: Source, it became much more. It's recently peaked at numbers such as 1.5 million concurrent players, and is the number one game on steam, one of the biggest game platforms online. However, the only nessecary purchase in the game is a 15$ "prime" upgrade which gives you a rank and chance to earn ingame drops. Technically you can play the game for completely free. So how does valve make money off of counter strike?
Skins are a way of both semi harmlessly unlocking a way to earn money from players as well as generate lots of social media buzz about the game. They dont upgrade your weapon in any way- every player has the same stats. But recently a skin from cs:go (a very rare skin pattern with very expensive stickers) Just sold for 400,000$ real. life. dollars. The skin was unboxed from a case- which to open a case requires a case (usually an ingame drop) and a case key (2.50$ straight to valve).
Each one of those four things on the skin is a sticker. Each one of those specific stickers is 50,000 real life dollars. First of all, it's very shocking to be told a digital weapon skin is worth a decent house, but this is a whole underground stock exchange revolving around digital weapon skins. Players sell to other players through valve's own marketplace- the Steam Community Market (which gives valve a market fee percentage), as well as third party sites and other methods of exchange. This system is something that has been a core of digital item trading far before the days of NFTs (which are plagued by rugpulls, or scams where owners of the token dump it and scam their investors).
So how is valve taking the skins market, the main moneymaker and way to generate buzz about the game, into the future with their free sequel game, Counter Strike 2?
First of all, Counter Strike 2 was announced to be coming Summer 2023, on March 22nd 2023. A limited beta was released to some players while others got left out. It was a risky move that made valve get under fire by many content creators and other figures in the community. But the few players that did get in were in awe. The criticism soon faded away.
Counter strike was completely remade on a new upgraded engine, meaning lighting improvements and better looking skins. This made the market shoot up nearly double to even quadruple on some items. Valve showed through their blog just how good the skins looked and generated buzz within the community. All through a limited beta. The game wasnt even out yet and people were pouring money into the market in anticipation.
This blog post and short demo videos were all the company needed. They sent it to their core fans first, through an ingame notification and the videos showcasing the game to youtube subscribers. Similar to how biden announced his vice presidential pick back in 2020, it was sent to supporters/core fans first. Valve has a cult following and they know it. I think it was the perfect way of going about it.
As the text states, skins from csgo carry over to Counter Strike 2, something many prominent skin traders were worried about before the game's announcement.
Youtuber and former Pro player Shroud voiced his happiness semi-sarcastically over the announcement- "Everything we paid for we got to keep... Wow"
Youtuber and Pro FURIOUSSS stated happily "There you go tinfoil hatters, skins are not going to be gone".
German content creator Ohnepixel was at a loss for words about the entire game, all he said was "VAS?" over and over [his trademark phrase basically meaning "what"]
As you can probably infer by the tone the first two of these fans of the game took, there was a lot of worry that skins would not transfer over to the new game (theories from people anticipating the new release). However valve knew how important skins were to their company and knew not to reset the market like that. They listened to worries from their fanbase and adjusted the game accordingly to show that they care about their players. This way of appealing to their adoring fans first let gaming journals get the news mostly through people talking about it on social media.
Valve is communicating with counter strike's fanbase promptly and effectively through their actions more than their words. However they have had some things to say about the new game on their Twitter.
So, what did they say? Here it is:
Valve knows how much people care about the game and knew that's all theyd need to tweet to send the community into a frenzy. This kind of marketing is almost Nike or Apple level, simply saying the name of the product is enough to make people love it. Its like Tim Cook saying the next iphone will be free and then just walking offstage with no further comment. It's awesome and exactly what I expect of valve. I absolutely would not do it different.
I learned that effective communicators create a social firestorm not by marketing the product, but by creating a relationship with their fans and giving them something that makes them happy. I truly believe a company with half the customer relations skills as valve is a company with infinite potential.
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