The price of DST skins are plunging

[blizstorm]

Since 5 March, on a daily basis, a few sellers are selling skins on a massive quantity, with price of skin declining about 50%. This is generally across all the skins except for heirloom, guest of honor, funko pop skins. An example of the price plunge https://steamcommunity.com/market/listings/322330/FIREPIT_FANGED 

I believe someone has managed to obtained 10,000-30,000 accounts, hopefully legitimately, logging in daily to get the skin drop and then selling them to the market. If the trend is to continue, I would expect price of an elegant skin to eventually to drop to 3 cents each.The computational cost of logging in an account daily and then selling it to the market would be very cheap, with the major cost being the cost of purchasing a DST account. So even if the botter is selling elegant skin at 3 cents each, the botter would likely still make a marginal profit.

If the trend is to continue,

The owner of the bots is expected to profit

Players desiring skins would be able to get skin for cheap

Current and future owners of skins would experience a devaluation of skin

Bona fide players would be less incentivise with the skin drop

Klei pricing of skins would be severely depressed by the flood of cheap skins that can be converted to spool. This would then then decrease the revenue of DST and limit its future viability.. 

[Chesmu]

I'm also suspecting something like that! I'm sure some Elegants were like 3-4 bucks, after I received one I barely managed to sell it because of the constant decline from the 1 bucks, and finally sold it for 70 cents!

This should totally be investigated.

[Notecja]

I think Klei is going to slowly disconnect from steam market, as more and more skins is weaverable.

[Cheggf]

1 hour ago, Notecja said:

I think Klei is going to slowly disconnect from steam market, as more and more skins is weaverable.

Check the last sentence.

2 hours ago, blizstorm said:

Klei pricing of skins would be severely depressed by the flood of cheap skins that can be converted to spool.

It doesn't matter that they've been going away from the community market, those old skins both still drop and are still sellable on the community market. Those old skins can be purchased for cheap, unravelled into spools, and used on whatever new content they release with Klei only getting 5-10% of the already much smaller revenue.

It's always been like that, but if skins' prices are falling at an unusually fast rate from an influx of bot accounts it might become problematic.

[VouMorrer]

can klei check wich accounts are logging every day but never entered in a server?

[Rylanor]

19 minutes ago, VouMorrer said:

can klei check wich accounts are logging every day but never entered in a server?

Probably most of these accounts might afk on private locked servers for even more skins

[Captain_Rage]

3 hours ago, blizstorm said:

I believe someone has managed to obtained 10,000-30,000 accounts, hopefully legitimately, logging in daily to get the skin drop and then selling them to the market

At that magnitude, wouldn't the cost of operating such a number of accounts be very high and far from proportional to any income they might bring? I mean, dear heaven, having to set up a system that log in every one of those accounts must be a most cumbersome thing. Without analyzing it farther, it feels like it would most likely not pay off... although I might be wrong.

[Maslak]

I don't play this game anymore but I'm still holding onto my Wicker and WX GoH I bought long ago for some stupid reason. Gonna fund my bright future with these babies.

[Well-met]

I think you underestimate the amount of people who willingly buy from the shop to simply support klei. The items are just a bonus.

[Gods fiddler]

This is sad, I had some skins with some value and the price collapsed, hopefully it will be fixed soon

[MondayNight]

I don't believe there's anything "nefarious" going on of that implied magnitude. Sure there are some leech-for-skins servers out there (they precisely advertise it in their servers names), yet not even close to tilt Steam Market prices in the slightest. Personally I think is just an outcome of KLei making skins more accessible via their new system, with spools and direct buying: people in general have started selling old skins to get some return in the long run, anticipating the future "superfluousness" of the Steam Market regarding old merchandise - plus it seems KLei isn't making anymore skins for old system of drops-only. Just look what happened with the Heirloom variants and how making homologous in-name's-color-only alternatives for rare skins like GoH devalued perceived worth of original collection to the point people start dump-selling on Marketplace at lower-and-lower prices (take Creepy Cauldron for example: its all-times-high was almost 150E, then plateaued at around 50E for a long period, while now - after weavable-via-Spools version got out - is going for under 3E). C'est la vie, probably OP (and people of same mindset) should get use to "Current and future owners of skins would experience a devaluation of skin".

As a side-note regarding "bonafide players would be less incentivized with the skin drop": people "playing" for drops to sell is a terrible way to go at DST or have Steam Wallet profits. If someone "plays" this game purely for drops-to-sell-for-heavy-bucks, might as well either quit or set a leeching server up too whether electrical bill ca be justified by those drops in any shape-or-form (spoiler: it won't be).

PS: as a personal take on the matter of Steam DST Market prices dipping - I very much fancy it, since I take it as an opportunity to get low-ball offers for past skins I/one might fancy but were way too pricey till KLei introduced the Spools mechanic, plus buying directly from them. Only people I see going "REEE" about it are either ones that bought for 30-50$ skins now priced at <3$ or speculators trying to make profits off of Steam Market.

[Gods fiddler]

I remember that one day I wanted my brother to try this game, he had no money so he used the steam family sharing , he opened the game and received a skin, when playing on a local server he got another gift, maybe this is the bug that bots are using to sell so many items on steam

[VouMorrer]

2 hours ago, Rylanor said:

Probably most of these accounts might afk on private locked servers for even more skins

i didnt thought of that, but wouldnt it require even more work?

41 minutes ago, Gods fiddler said:

I remember that one day I wanted my brother to try this game, he had no money so he used the steam family sharing , he opened the game and received a skin, when playing on a local server he got another gift, maybe this is the bug that bots are using to sell so many items on steam

wasnt it fixed some time ago?

[Articestone]

The more people who play dst=more people who have extra skin to sell. 

Of course it also means that there will be more demand for skin just that the supply is often over demand. 

When supply is over demand = more competition which means the overall price will get lower so that it can definitely be sold, (sell it at a lower than average price) instead of it on the marketplace not sold at all. 

Thus when this trend continue the overall price get lower but it only apply for older weavable skins for now i think. 

Take it with a pinch of salt because i don't study economics, this is just my opinion and deductions 

[Mx-Pain]

How does that work ? If I buy a skin, how do I redeem that into my account ?

[Chesmu]

Nah I think the reason is this: A lot of Klei's weaveable or even free (Loyal/Timeless) items are much more good looking and diverse than those a few years old Marketable Elegants.

We have new favorites now and Marketable items are not progressing! Expect them to fall below 50cents anytime.

[W0l0l0]

Shame. I would have been happy with a skin economy if it meant Klei could continue working on the same game for a very long time and a popularity that long since converged.

[Cheggf]

11 hours ago, Captain_Rage said:

At that magnitude, wouldn't the cost of operating such a number of accounts be very high and far from proportional to any income they might bring? I mean, dear heaven, having to set up a system that log in every one of those accounts must be a most cumbersome thing. Without analyzing it farther, it feels like it would most likely not pay off... although I might be wrong.

A single computer can easily run several instances of Steam + DST at the same time and it only takes a few seconds to get the daily present. Even assuming every single drop was only worth the minimum $0.01 (which is obviously wrong, many drops are worth dozens of cents) that would still be hundreds of dollars a day from the daily log in rewards alone.

You are severely overestimating how hard it is to log in to a Steam account and severely underestimating how much tens of thousands of pennies are worth.

[Notecja]

1 minute ago, Cheggf said:

A single computer can easily run several instances of Steam + DST at the same time and it only takes a few seconds to get the daily present. Even assuming every single drop was only worth the minimum $0.01 (which is obviously wrong, many drops are worth dozens of cents) that would still be hundreds of dollars a day from the daily log in rewards alone.

You are severely overestimating how hard it is to log in to a Steam account and severely underestimating how much tens of thousands of pennies are worth.

First they would need to get account+game. Game for every account, because daily can get 1 drop (365 drops a year) +8 for being in game for 8-12h weekly (something like 400 extra drops). 

Unless accounts are stolen and used illegaly (that would make them free) then is would be quite expensive to start with (how much was game? 15? 20? I'm not familliar with $).

I believe bot/thief person would artificially raise prices for sold stuff. Like to buy cheapest (0.05-0.12) and sell more expensive (like... lets pretend something like 0.30-0.40) and for that thing is one or two weeks of cooldown, so maybe it doesn't work like that... Anyway selling 50 things at 0.30 sound better than 40 at 0.05. 

[Cheggf]

Just now, Notecja said:

First they would need to get account+game. Game for every account, because daily can get 1 drop (365 drops a year) +8 for being in game for 8-12h weekly (something like 400 extra drops). 

Unless accounts are stolen and used illegaly (that would make them free) then is would be quite expensive to start with (how much was game? 15? 20? I'm not familliar with $).

I believe bot/thief person would artificially raise prices for sold stuff. Like to buy cheapest (0.05-0.12) and sell more expensive (like... lets pretend something like 0.30-0.40) and for that thing is one or two weeks of cooldown, so maybe it doesn't work like that... Anyway selling 50 things at 0.30 sound better than 40 at 0.05. 

DST is $15 for two copies, so if you were going to just buy it a lot to try to do this it would be $7.50 per copy. Except it frequently goes on sale for $5 (according to this), so that's only $2.50 a copy. That would only be a few weeks or maybe months to start profiting from the account.

[HowlVoid]

I don't think we need to worry too much about kleis earnings. On consoles the only way to get skins is through them. I have personally spent over $100 on their store (though I have not spent all of my spools).

[FuriousChimera]

Steam wallet fund is worthless - you can't get the money back to your bank account or trade anywhere except buying steam games. And to be able to use steam market trading, an account has to have 5 dollars and one purchase. So this "bot" spent minimum 50000 - 150000 dollars for basically worthless steamfund that can not trade to any bank account or real-life money whatsoever, all over 10000 - 30000 accounts, instead of buying a car, pay student loan, invest in stocks, real estate or put in the bank account for interested rate ?
Don't over complicated this, steam market plunge because Klei released weavable - skin packets based on the high demand. No one is dumb enough to spend a life-saving in indie game skins.

[Gods fiddler]

 

24 minutes ago, FuriousChimera said:

Steam wallet fund is worthless - you can't get the money back to your bank account or trade anywhere except buying steam games. And to be able to use steam market trading, an account has to have 5 dollars and one purchase. So this "bot" spent minimum 50000 - 150000 dollars for basically worthless steamfund that can not trade to any bank account or real-life money whatsoever, all over 10000 - 30000 accounts, instead of buying a car, pay student loan, invest in stocks, real estate or put in the bank account for interested rate ?
Don't over complicated this, steam market plunge because Klei released weavable - skin packets based on the high demand. No one is dumb enough to spend a life-saving in indie game skins.

you need to investigate more about recover steam money,in games like cs go or tf2 there is something called trade and if you know how to do it you earn enough money, then you can sell tf2 or cs go keys on facebook or other pages with an intermediary to prevent scams.

[Viktor234]

28 minutes ago, Notecja said:

First they would need to get account+game. Game for every account, because daily can get 1 drop (365 drops a year) +8 for being in game for 8-12h weekly (something like 400 extra drops). 

Unless accounts are stolen and used illegaly (that would make them free) then is would be quite expensive to start with (how much was game? 15? 20? I'm not familliar with $).

I believe bot/thief person would artificially raise prices for sold stuff. Like to buy cheapest (0.05-0.12) and sell more expensive (like... lets pretend something like 0.30-0.40) and for that thing is one or two weeks of cooldown, so maybe it doesn't work like that... Anyway selling 50 things at 0.30 sound better than 40 at 0.05. 

One DST Account grants you:

1. 365 daily drops a year
2. 417 weekly drops a year
3. 2086 weekly Family Sharing (1) drops a year

(1) Family Sharing allows you to play the same game on up to 5 accounts, but only if neither the owner nor anybody else who has access to the game plays the game right now. Family Sharing Accounts don't have access to daily drops, but that's not the case for weekly drops.

All in all you would be able to obtain at least 2868 drops a year. If every drop would be worth $0.01, that would mean "bot/thief" would earn enough money after 0.089 years or 32 days to buy another DST game ($5.09 required to buy 2 copies).

But that's also only the case for if "bot/thief" has not more than 5 Family Sharing accounts and if every drop would be worth $0.01 only, if he includes a system which rotates his Family Sharing between more than 5 accounts, that would result in more than 2868 drops a year per DST game and less than 5 weeks to get enough money for another game.

3 minutes ago, FuriousChimera said:

Steam wallet fund is worthless - you can't get the money back to your bank account or trade anywhere except buying steam games.

There are players out there who are ready to pay real money for a good offer, despite all the scammers out there.

[Notecja]

4 hours ago, Viktor234 said:

One DST Account grants you:

1. 365 daily drops a year
2. 417 weekly drops a year
3. 2086 weekly Family Sharing (1) drops a year

(1) Family Sharing allows you to play the same game on up to 5 accounts, but only if neither the owner nor anybody else who has access to the game plays the game right now. Family Sharing Accounts don't have access to daily drops, but that's not the case for weekly drops.

All in all you would be able to obtain at least 2868 drops a year. If every drop would be worth $0.01, that would mean "bot/thief" would earn enough money after 0.089 years or 32 days to buy another DST game ($5.09 required to buy 2 copies).

But that's also only the case for if "bot/thief" has not more than 5 Family Sharing accounts and if every drop would be worth $0.01 only, if he includes a system which rotates his Family Sharing between more than 5 accounts, that would result in more than 2868 drops a year per DST game and less than 5 weeks to get enough money for another game.

There are players out there who are ready to pay real money for a good offer, despite all the scammers out there.

And now more and more new skins are not possible to sell on steam. So these numbers slowly become smaller amd smaller and whole system less worthy for dst. (Also free copy is applied only once per account and game is for £10.99. You can't buy two another free copy from same account.). I dont negate that for some time it was worthy - but I would say it was worthy when skins were like twice-three times more worthy and somebody enough clever to hoard skins that way would have at least a little skill to manipulate prices too. But this is how I believe...