Players, traders and collectors in Team Fortress 2 have come to expect a stirring of the economy with fun and games revolving around many yearly events including The Steam Summer Sale. During last year’s sale, new virtual items were introduced to players—both through The Mann Co Store (TF2’s in-game store) and in achievement items presented to those willing to do a little groundwork within Steam and its catalog of games. While only four days into its festivities, this year’s sale doesn’t seem to hold a Waxy Wayfinder to its predecessors.
Why such high expectations?
Starting last June, The Steam Summer Camp event began introducing an achievement-based meta-game that earned you carnival tickets that you could then turn in for a wide variety of DLC. Each day’s achievements ranged from tasks within Steam like linking your Facebook profile, to in-game goals—such as winning a hand with a 6 and a 9 card of any suit in Poker Night at the Inventory. It was pretty easy to earn three tickets that you could then turn in for the Summer Shades in TF2. As simple as it was, only approximately 122,000 players redeemed their tickets for the shades. Only? Consider there are more than two million TF2 players today. The shades have always been popular, and despite being untradable (unless you use a costs-money “Gift Wrap” item), they are almost always moving through the economy. More than two years later, you can easily find a pair of Summer Shades for sale, for the equivalent to $5.25 to $12.00 of in-game items (depending on the fluctuation of the market).
Also during the Steam Summer Sale, TF2 players started receiving Refreshing Summer Coolers, a new series of crate, in their random drops in-game. Valve introduced the Mann Co Summer Sale in The Mann Co Store and special Refreshing Summer Cooler Keys became available for purchase in The Mann Co Store, which allowed players to open the coolers. Of the nine new weapons, hats and miscellaneous items introduced in the coolers, there was really only one item that had enough demand for the value to rise. The Rogue’s Col Roule was a sleek looking turtleneck for the Spy that was trading for two to thee times the value of the key used to open the cooler.
Pretty Isn't it? Pretty Expensive.
The star of the show, though, was the Summer Sun Pack—only available by purchase in The Mann Co Store. The three items included in the pack were The Flip Flops and Lucky #42 for the Scout, and an all-class Summer Hat. Each item could also be purchased separately, giving them different distribution numbers. The pack and even the items alone were not cheap by most standards and with The Flip Flops being the only really popular item, only around 4000 were sold. These items look great in-game, and were made paintable and tradable in following updates, giving them quite the demand. Due to this high demand and limited quantities, the set is commonly listed for $45 to $60 worth of in-game items in trade.
Mann Co Summer Sale 2012, A different kind of “flop”
This year, another Mann Co Summer sale was introduced, and is going on right now. So far only in-store discounts on existing items have been revealed. The sale includes 75% off one of my personal favorite hats, The Team Captain, which is designed after M. Bison’s hat in the Street Fighter series of games. Because hats purchased in The Mann Co Store are uncraftable, they are considered “dirty” and do not have the value that their “clean” craftable counterparts have. Therefore, the economy is only slightly affected by discounted hats in the store, with lightly lowered demand as some players don’t care about clean or dirty—they just want the hat. Other notable saving are 80% off Name tags, 60% off Description Tags and 25-75% off paints including dual team paints such as Cream Spirit and Waterlogged Lab Coat. These each have been lowered to a price just about equal to the metal values they recently had been traded for. This seems to have only cemented these values for the length of the sale.
That’s it, huh?
That is all we’ve got so far. Are there surprises to come? Does Valve have plans to introduce some new items at some time during the Summer Sale? Keep an eye on TF2 to find out. The Mann Co Summer Sale runs through July 22, so make sure to check out what’s available in The Mann Co Store. If hats and paints are not your thing, you can still hop on and just play some TF2. If you are on the market for a rad group to play with, Icrontic community members gather regularly on Tuesday nights on our own TF2 server, and play most other nights just for kicks. See you there!
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