Speculation, Scarcity, and Social Media: Pricing Mechanisms in the CSGO Skin Economy

DOI

10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_101How to use a DOI?

Keywords

CSGO Skin Economy; Pricing Mechanisms; Social Media

Abstract

This paper aims to help people understand how the CSGO market works and how does it become a stuff that could be similar to futures. In the paper, the connections between the skin market and the futures were listed, also, specific examples could be found there. Next, this paper provides how social media affects such market. Especially how the words mentally controlled the players who wants to buy skins. There are also clear examples that have been happened within 5 years. The motivation is to provide an insight for the mechanism of such markets, generalizing the rules and proved analyzes to help beginners better understand the system. Examples like pro gamer S1mple, who made the skin price skyrocketed within one game, Kenny that shows their appreciation toward one skin also boost its price and the stock. Streamers also provides case opening service made the market keeping its heat within ten years. Those side effects helped the game involving more new players and better community atmosphere. Moreover, famous icons advertising this game made more people who don’t know it to start watching game plays and memes.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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TY  - CONF
AU  - Mingzhe Zhang
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/04/29
TI  - Speculation, Scarcity, and Social Media: Pricing Mechanisms in the CSGO Skin Economy
BT  - Proceedings of the 2026 11th International Conference on Financial Innovation and Economic Development (ICFIED 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 959
EP  - 965
SN  - 2352-5428
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_101
DO  - 10.2991/978-94-6239-642-5_101
ID  - Zhang2026
ER  -