I'm lacking in general knowledge and I feel like I'm turbo-theorycrafting, but this solution seems kinda strange in the long run:
- everyone keeps every single unusual, taking thousands of potential buyers out of the market
- both the steam market and third party sellers (scrap, backpack, stn) suffer from the reduced demand
- whatever percentage of lan/tournament/season prize pool supplied by resell markets drops, unless geel feels especially generous
- valves own quarterly profits from the Mann co store and market transactions drop, making untangling spaghetti code to keep the lights on even less worthwhile
- valve keeps every penny they profited from the mistake
Correct me anywhere if I'm wrong, but doesn't this feel like the closest thing to valve physically cashing out all their tf2 chips? They raked in thousands now and nearly butchered the last thing keeping the game running monetarily. Like, we all know they're no strangers to both wholesale slaughtering their virtual economies and not caring about tf2's welfare, but doing next to nothing about the unusuals really does seem like the "welp we tried" solution to the problem.
Additionally, that refund policy is actually pointless. No one in their right mind is gonna return a high tier unusual for the ~$10 in steam funds they spent on it.
In this essay I