Selling just weapons on the Workshop

Zack Maxwell · Jun 2014

How does it even work selling lone weapons on the Workshop? As far as I can tell, players can only buy full sets; there is no option to buy just a weapon. I've gotten weapons from chests or winning matches, but many of those were part of a larger set as well, even ignoring the fact that I did not pay for it (at least directly).
Did they at some later point make it necessary to create a full set in order to get accepted?

AndrewHelenek · Jun 2014

GhostDetector · Jun 2014

Item goes into chest > Person pays a key or whatever > if the person opens your item. you get some money from valve. If he doesn't then you dont get any money (another person does).

You can also get money from the steam market.

But I don't think you can buy an item individually directly from valve.

Edit: Before you were able to, I remember seeing Eye of Omoz being around $12. I thinked they stopped that because people would just buy items directly from valve instead of opening chests. Meaning that some artists will be getting less money while others get more since they are buying it directly from valve.

Zack Maxwell · Jun 2014

Aha, so accepted individual items will always go into a chest, and you get a fraction of the sales from that particular chest it was placed inside...

Baddcog · Jun 2014

I like how TF2 does chests better. All artists get a cut from every key purchased. Since it is a random item opening then that means artists get paid evenly.

All artists are contributing to the crate so... oh wutever Valve.

Insaneophobia · Jun 2014

I'm pretty sure it's the same way here badcog

AndrewHelenek · Jun 2014

it is, they simply removed the aspect of key/chest thats seen in TF2.

MdK · Jun 2014

Baddcog wrote: »

I like how TF2 does chests better. All artists get a cut from every key purchased. Since it is a random item opening then that means artists get paid evenly.

All artists are contributing to the crate so... oh wutever Valve.

You could quite easily argue it is not as fair as it could be. Undoubtedly many people buy a lot of chests to get the very rare items and are not interested in the others at all. In this case, a large amount of the income is coming solely from the very rare items, for people who made the less rare items to then get the same cut seems somewhat unfair.

Zipfinator · Jun 2014

MdK wrote: »

You could quite easily argue it is not as fair as it could be. Undoubtedly many people buy a lot of chests to get the very rare items and are not interested in the others at all. In this case, a large amount of the income is coming solely from the very rare items, for people who made the less rare items to then get the same cut seems somewhat unfair.

On the flip side, the rare items are completely determined by Valve. So just because Valve said your item is rarer than another item that had the same amount of work and effort put into it you should make more money?

The one thing I do agree with that view though is that unusual couriers I believe used to not make ANY money from the chests they were dropped in which was the main reason people kept pumping money into them and they definitely should have gotten a cut.

Baddcog · Jun 2014

Ah, just read Ghosts post and he stated money went to opened item...

---
But yeah, Valve determines rare item status, and that is to get people to keep buying crates. Like Unusuals in TF2 (which are random hat/effect).

I don't see how it would be more fair to give them more in that regard. That's just Valve's preference on item (and we all know how confusing it can be to figure out what they are doing or why).
Players aren't necessarily buying for that item, just for the 'rare' status as that item is worth more in trade.

AndrewHelenek · Jun 2014

Zipfinator wrote: »

The one thing I do agree with that view though is that unusual couriers I believe used to not make ANY money from the chests they were dropped in which was the main reason people kept pumping money into them and they definitely should have gotten a cut.

This is from an email over a year ago;

We dont pay out royalties for unusual couriers. We are under no obligation to pay for items included in crates if they were already listed on the storethats part of our workshop agreement text.
To be extremely clear: [removed] isnt dropping as a normal item in these crates. Its dropping as an unusual rare reward. We treat these as a special case.

You are correct, and I surely hope that isnt the case with the rare rewards of recent chests.

Zack Maxwell · Jun 2014

Zipfinator wrote: »

On the flip side, the rare items are completely determined by Valve. So just because Valve said your item is rarer than another item that had the same amount of work and effort put into it you should make more money?

The one thing I do agree with that view though is that unusual couriers I believe used to not make ANY money from the chests they were dropped in which was the main reason people kept pumping money into them and they definitely should have gotten a cut.

Actually, the rare items generally have far more work put into them. Most are given rare status because they go so far as to include things like animations or VFX.

GhostDetector · Jun 2014

This is the reason why I said everyone's item in the chests got a different amount of money.

6 - Indirect Distributions of Contributions. Valve or the Publisher may charge a fee for the right or chance to later obtain one or more Contributions (for example, the sale of a “key” that can be used to unlock a crate containing a set of content). In cases such as these, where a fee is charged indirectly for the ability to acquire content, Valve and/or the Publisher may determine what revenue share will be paid for any Contributions that are ultimately distributed, and how such revenue share will be allocated amongst multiple Contributors, in its sole discretion.

Agreement Link

Since the drops are random. One person's item might have more drops than the other. So I understood that each artist would get their own share instead of sharing from one pile.

Selling just weapons on the Workshop

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