Digital economies and trading in counter strike global offensive: How virtual items are valued to real world currencies in an online barter-free market

In this paper, we provide a highly detailed analysis of the online marketplace for Counter Strike: Global Offensive. Looking to publicly available trade data on the Steam Community Market, we illustrate how players effectively utilize the market to earn money through Real Money Trade (RMT). Looking to the design of the game itself, we illustrate that the two most significant factors in determining the value of an item are; the supply and demand of a skin and the exterior design of a skin. Moreover, we illustrate how changes to the StatTrak property of virtual items - a recent and significant modification to the game - have a significant impact on these findings.