The future of skin economy
The future of skin economy Valve takes another step in their fight against gambling and shutting Opskins down. While it seems like a hard blow to the gaming community, there is a huge upside to it that people tend to miss. We all love skins as they allow us to better express ourselves in game and nourish our unique identity. However, over the past few years an entire new economy has developed upon skins: marketplaces, trades, gambling, paying methods and what not. It grew so fast and heavily that numbers reported last year tell us that this market alone was evaluated at $5B. Unfortunately, gambling and trades constitute a major part of this market, and it was just recently that Valve has decided to go against these phenomenons. It started with a 7-day-trade-lock rule that has been added to any trade and now continues with shutting down the biggest skin marketplace out there — OPskins. For those of you who don’t know, Opskins allows anyone to buy and sell skins for IRL mo...