April Fools joke unbalances Counter Strike marketplace

The size and value of the Counter Strike weapons market is often a surprise to folk not in the know.

Gamers routinely buy and sell rare skins for three figure sums. So anything that disrupts the balance of the economy can be pretty significant for an awful lot of people.

Kotaku reports that YouTuber McSkillet recently released a video demonstrating how ten reasonably low value Covert skins could be traded up for a random knife – which potentially could be worth hundreds of pounds. At the end of the video it was clearly stated that the whole thing was an April Fool, but this was completely missed by large numbers of viewers who didn’t watch through to the end and were keen to be the first to cash in.

The result? Prices for Covert weapons started to soar. It’s estimated that in total over $53k more was spent on said weapons than would have been at the standard market rate. It has taken days for the market prices to stabilise again.

McSkillet has been well humoured about the incident but those who mistakenly spent cash have been somewhat less amused.

The lesson? Don’t believe everything you see on YouTube (and always read to the end of the story).