It’s no secret that the CS: GO’s item economy can be quite profitable. Some of the game’s rarest weapon skins are priced at over $1, 000 (with rare collectors’ items approaching pricelessness).

The constant and growing free cs go skins demand for skins by the game’s players, and the slot machine-like experience of opening weapon cases in the slim hopes of getting a desirable skin, has created a huge, free-range capitalist market that allows all kinds of gambling, trading, and skin selling to take place outside of Valve’s intended corral for such activity.

As studies have shown, prohibiting people from funneling and gambling capital tends to create an illicit market. When skins were introduced to CS: GO via the Arms Deal update in August of 2013, it was only a matter of time before players would find a way to independently price, trade, and hoard skins in an increasingly complex economic network that sees some of its entrepreneurs supposedly making over $12, 000 a day.