Steam users earned over $ 57 million in virtual hats and cards

The business of selling all kinds of artifacts and “gear” in multiplayer games can be very profitable - in principle, this has been known for a long time. But how much do such virtual merchants earn? Thanks to the information provided by Steam , you can now understand the income level of such sellers. So, since the launch of Steam Workshop in 2011, the creators of virtual goods have earned more than 57 million US dollars. According to the company, the money was made by 1,500 virtual merchants from 75 countries.

If you try to calculate how much per person, you get 38 thousand per person. It is clear that no one knows the real distribution of income, except for the sellers themselves. Most likely, averaging here is akin to “Vasya eats cabbage, Vitalik - meat, and on average they both eat stuffed cabbage”. In other words, the lion's share of Steam Workshop revenue probably belongs to a small percentage of users.



Team Fortress hats aren’t such a silly thing to do. It is not necessary to quit work for the sake of such a change of activity, but as a fallback, now we know where you can earn money. In addition to hats, cards of game levels (for example, in Dota 2), skins for game characters, and other things are used. “When we launched Workshop in 2011, we expected the market to grow, but did not expect it to grow at such a fast pace,” Valve said.

Now the company plans to open stores with virtual goods for non-Valve games, where users can earn money by selling items for Dungeon Defenders: Eternity and Chivalry: Medieval Warfare. Apparently, such a market will continue to expand, and users selling goods will be able to receive even more real, not virtual, banknotes.