Team Fortress 2: nine hats to be retired
By Alice Lynton on January 12, 2013 at 12:45 pm
Valve has announced that nine Team Fortress 2 hats are to be withdrawn from sale, crate drops and crafting. According to Mann Co, a freak incident involving mayonnaise and raccoons means that current stocks of the Batter’s Helmet, Soldier’s Stash, Pyro’s Beanie, Demoman’s ‘Fro, Football Helmet, Mining Light, Prussian Pickelhaube, Trophy Belt and Fancy Fedora are gone … they’re gone forever. You have just two weeks to get hold of these historical items by any means.
What makes all this particularly interesting is that Team Fortress 2 is kind of a flagship for experimental free-to-play economies; Valve has its own on-staff economist to study the weird and wonderful things the shooter produces. What happens when a virtual item becomes rare? Should be fun to watch.
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Damn… I should have held onto that flaming stash when I tapped out of TF2
Thats a good thing in a way. It opens up more hats etc for potential modders to create and get in. Assuming Valve don’t keep picking the SAME modders over and over again.
trixxter,
Better the devil you know…
This is by definition an artificial scarcity, the ability to create additional copies of these hats is without limit. It will definitely be interesting to see how this progresses, especially since it will drive up the prices of these hats far above their competitors.
With the click of a mouse Valve can increase their profits on these items. The real test will be how far can they push it before people stop buying them.
@blackpatriot, the point is that people can no longer buy them. It only really affects the trading market but it will be interesting to see how much given these are likely the most common hats.
TF2 hats sell for a lot of money. Buy up guys.
I am selling my burning demoman’s fro
http://steamcommunity.com/id/john0/
ottomatic,
I’m not up-to-date with TF2′s hat (and presumably other items as well) system, but I assume that Valve still gets a percentage of whatever the players sell to each other as well as when players buy items directly from the store. If so then they’ve still increased their profits, if not then they’ve at least enticed players to keep collecting, in the hope that items they already own will become limited. Either way, more money for Valve.
It’s still intrigues me how virtual items are attractive enough to result in the real-world transfer of money (buying and selling). Buying digital content makes sense, since that includes the games themselves, videos, music, digital books and so on. But virtual goods only exist with a game, they have no intrinsic value and are intangible by definition.
Clearly the developers of an increasing number of games have worked out the allure of such trinkets. I’m not sure it’s a healthy thing for the future of gaming though. Not going to be harsh on anyone who’s done it, but I guess one should question why they do it, particularly since they can’t hold onto the items if the game disappears (whereas with videos and music you can, so long as it’s DRM free).
Kunodiablo: Speaking from my experiance with my unusual tf2 hats (I won one and bought the other), unusual hats are all about prestige. Which I have found to be noticeable in public servers (often the competitive scene has unusual hats and not uncommon for a whole team to be rocking the same effect, best dressed awards!). It’s also pretty cool to be playing with friends as it lets you distingiush yourself from scrubs in the pub server.
In a game as healthy as tf2 (thanks to valve) I didn’t mind paying for my burning fro because I knew that the game was not going to disappear any time soon (imo still the most enjoyable competitive FPS team game atm). Because of people like me and many others want them. The demand for these hats drives the value.
kunodiablo,
What exactly are you comparing these intangible products to?
You can hold a book in your hand, but that’s not what you paid your money for. The IP you just bought has absolutely no objective value, apart from that which is artificially set by supply and demand.
Same goes for movies, games…. basically anything which isn’t food or water. Including the absolutely valueless money you just used to buy something.
The simple fact that someone wants something is what gives it value, disregarding a good because it “only exists in a virtual world” is like disregarding music because you can’t eat it.
Having said that, I have absolutely no interest in TF2 hats. Then again, I laugh at the idea of paying millions of dollars for a painting just because some dead Italian painted it.
I bought a beard for my heavy.
I bought it because I like beards. When I play with people they see my beard. I like that. The more beards in the world, the better.
I think valve do now get a percentage of items that are traded through the new trading system they implemented a few months back. They also get a percentage from new purchases made at the mann co store.