In the past few days, the game accessories market of CS2 (Counter-Strike 2) has staged an epic storm, with the market value plummeting from about $6 billion to around $4 billion, evaporating nearly $2 billion in one day. Holders sold off one after another, and the trading platform was once paralyzed.

The trigger for this huge earthquake was a mechanism update released by "CS2" game developer Valve in the early morning of October 23: players can use 5 pieces of red skin to synthesize a gold jewelry in the future. In the past, some players compared the scarce high-end jewelry in the game to "digital gold". In the past, everyone bought it for investment in scarcity value preservation, but now you can use 5 pieces of "silver" to synthesize a piece of "gold", and the "gold price" after mass production naturally collapses.

According to the jewelry market index monitoring site steamdt, within two days, the large plate fell from 1663 points to 652 points, falling more than 60%. On October 25, the market had a slight recovery, currentlyining at 881 points, and was also a downturn. while the popular jewelry "butterfly knife" in two days price fell from 20719 yuan to 5280 yuan, falling close to 75%.

On social platforms, many players exhibit account loss screenshots, some "looking open for an hour to lose 10,000", and some "evaporate 5 million in 3 hours".

However, there are old players like Luis who have dodged a bullet by selling early. He believes that this storm "washes away speculators and leaves players behind". At present, most of the businesses who lose more money are merchants who specialize in reselling hype, which has a positive impact on the game ecology of CS2.

But the question is, will the market collapse in the future? Will there be similar risks in other game trading markets? Is game trading a treasure or a bubble?

Game industry analyst Zhang Zhou told reporters that the game virtual objects themselves are not "value preservation", but the game research team and game mechanism "artificial" manufacturing scarcity, this incident for the virtual item market transaction, indeed, sounded the alarm clock.

¡°Some warehouses evaporated in five million in three hours.¡±

CS2 is one of the oldest IPs in the FPS (first-person shooting) game category, with a huge gaming base, and is still the game with the highest player activity on Steam, according to Steamdb's data, the game's highest online player number this year has exceeded 1.8 million.

In this game, skin, knives and gloves are like a kind of "virtual collectibles". Players can trade and buy freely. As rare gold ornaments, knives and gloves only have a very small probability of appearing when opening a "box", forming a higher transaction price in the secondary market.

But in this announcement, Valve stipulated that in the future, gamers can use 5 red skin ornaments to synthesize a gold ornament of the corresponding sequence, namely a knife or glove. This regulation caused a shock in the circle in a short period of time, and then the trading market plummeted, with knives and gloves generally falling by more than 50% or even 60%-70%.

Reporters on jewelry market index monitoring site steamdt saw that a ¡°butterfly knife¡± fell from 20719 to 5280 in two days, falling by 75 percent.

On social platforms, many users have exposed their account losses, ranging from several thousand yuan to hundreds of thousands. Some players said that "one hour changed from losing 30,000 yuan to losing 40,000 yuan." On the Perfect World E-sports Community Platform, the agent of the "CS2" game in China, a well-known player who once ranked first in the list of jewelry inventory value in China "Xiaobai Grocery Store" issued a document saying that "several positions of 5 million evaporated within 3 hours", and its attitude towards the developer Valve changed from trust to disappointment.

There are also players who succeeded in selling jewelry before the wave.Luis is the "CS2" game 8 years old player, just last month he just sold two jewelry, a total of about 5,000 yuan, if not sold at that time, and now the value of these jewelry has been directly crushed, came to about 2500 yuan.

Luis told the First Financial Reporter that most of those who have lost more are merchants that specialize in reselling and hype, and a small number are "big R" players (high-spending players). Therefore, the ones that have been really affected by this rule change are the ones in the market that make a living. It is beneficial to ordinary players and even the entire game ecosystem.

¡°The jewelry that could not afford before, can now be bought and played at a cheaper price, which will improve the game experience of ordinary players.¡±Luis is very supportive of the mechanism reform, he mentioned that before some full-time hype teams would have a control panel, hold some advantages in the hand, and keep its price at a high level, but actually the real supply and demand price is not too high. Now this mechanism is updated so that more players can get good jewelry at a lower cost, most ordinary players will support this modification.

Another game player also said that CS2 had previously traded too much speculation in the market, so increasing the volume of issuance was a disaster for the speculative trader or broadcaster, but it was a good thing for ordinary players, in his opinion, Valve this reform was taking care of ordinary players.

Some people in the industry have mentioned that Valve wants to commercialize, and this change is also the essence of encouraging players to open the box themselves, see the long-term trade between players more frequently, and no longer rely on third-party platforms. In addition, large investments into the "CS2" market has caused a bubble, the market has become dangerous, and the official cannot benefit from these third-party transactions, instead of taking risks, which may also be one of the important reasons for the modification.

It is worth noting that Valve's modification is not without signs, and the company has interfered with the market more than once this year. In mid-July, Valve changed the trading rules, the jewelry must wait 7 days after the trade to "protection period" to circulate again, during which time the player can withdraw the trade, the industry believes that this measure is also to weaken the speculative properties of "CS2" game jewelry.

Game trading is a treasure or a bubble?

Is the game virtual item transaction itself reliable? From CS2 to DOTA2, from Fantasy Westward Journey to Honor of Kings, almost all popular games have active secondary markets. Luis believes that the trading mechanism itself is not original sin.

¡°For example, buying a device that doesn¡¯t want to play, secondary market trading is active, I can sell it, if other games may not have the opportunity to sell other accessories, but a lifetime of binding in the account, it is not a good thing for the overall game ecology.¡±

However, Luis also believes that reasonable transactions do not mean that all markets will develop rationally. When markets are overheated and speculation is prevalent, losing control becomes inevitable.

Take "CS2" as an example. During the predecessor "CS:GO" period, jewelry trading has become an important part of the game ecosystem and is a decoration for players to show their individuality. However, as the price of CS jewelry has been rising due to reasons such as value preservation and scarcity, it has gradually been regarded as an investment option, giving birth to professional speculators, leasing businesses and even price monitoring software, forming a security-like market structure, which is called "T+14" by players."The trading mechanism (it can be sold within 7 days after purchase, plus a 7-day cooling-off period).

Until this mechanical reform, all the hypocritical wealth dreams were blurred, but the players believed that the whole market would be healthier.

In fact, in addition to "CS2", Xu Ming told the First Financial Reporter that the trading market of "DOTA2" had also collapsed several times, but then slowly recovered. In his view, the demand from players is still there, and the market will grow. There are also some people who believe that the collapse of jewelry is also a point where low prices enter the market, and the market is currently recovering.

Louis, however, believes that the mechanisms have been fundamentally changed after the update, the price will not return to the past. He can not be sure that this market will not collapse one day, the production mechanism of gaming equipment will not change in a few years. but it is important that the game return to the game, players can experience the game more purely and fun, manufacturers can also focus more on content creation and long-term operation, which is the whole game sustainable path.

Zhang Zhang believes that the incident is actually the alarm bell, the game virtual objects are the game research team and game mechanism "artificial" manufacturing scarcity, once the rules change to let the once scarcity become a big road goods, cover the entire market, and the establishment of the sand on the beach is not safe.

Some players lost 50 thousand yuan in this crash, he wrote on the social platform, "until the crash was still fantasy is to do some kind of value investment rather than speculative behavior", now backward to see, before overestimating their ability to take risks.

Some people in the industry suggest that investment should follow the general trend and should not come into contact with niche investment markets. Investment targets that are not "scarce" and are not "decentralized" are not worthy of attention. Game trading markets such as "CS2", just like Wenwan, stamp and other markets that collapsed before, "beat drums and pass flowers" among niche players, and it will collapse sooner or later.