Trading for MW3/Skyrim/AC/AAA Title. Why do people do it?

You can buy skyrim/saints row for less than 20 euro if you know where from. And you can sell those hats for much higher price.

I don't know, I see a lot of people have put MASSIVE amounts of value in TF2 related items, especially hats. I don't see the appeal myself, but I've never really played it, (Most of the hours on my account was a friend of mine who actually bought it when it not long came out.)

However sadly it's no different to say a salesman coming round to your door offering you your wildest dreams for the smallest of things, and then the person claims it was luck that it happened to them, or certain companies offering you amazing things for a 'small subscription fee'.

To be fair, i'd consider it rental. If somehow I managed to get something like Skyrim for, say a copy of Binding of Isaac. And it got removed after a week? I may as well consider it as if I rented the game, I played what I payed for.

You also have to remember the average age base would be between 12-20, most of which due to age, wouldn't be working, or lack full knowledge of common sense of how things work, and then find out the hard way.

Though, that's just how the world runs, Greed is one of the strongest sins of humans, next to lust ofcourse. And one of the easiest to influence/manipulate.

TF2 items and Skyrim are both electronic products, what's the difference? They're both worth the value people put behind them and they can both be reasonably hard to get. If you agree that both of them have value then the answer to your second question is also obvious: People trade copies of Skyrim or MW3 because they're easier to get a hold of than the TF2 items, and vice versa.

For example, I could play TF2 all the time and make no money, and as such have no way to get hold of Skyrim. On the flip side I could have an awesome job but no spare time, so getting Skyrim takes me a few hours of work at most, which I can trade for that TF2 item I'm after.

I see Dead Island keys being traded for trash games all the time.

no i don't find it odd. those stupid tf2 hats are worth money.

It's because people are buying these games through foreign sites for much cheaper than they'd normally cost in America. They are possibly even purchasing them through Russian CD key websites, and several people have had their accounts disabled from using these keys. Also, with Dead Island, Steam keys were obtained through an exploit that Steam tried to correct.

I would personally put much more value into a game than a digital hat, but hey, people make midgets fight lions and crush baby animals for fun. The world is a fucked up place.

Well, I have played TF2 for nearly 2 years now, and because of that I have a little "fortune" in there. I have all the items I could ever need right now, so when I get extra stuff I trade it away for games.

I'll try to explain how the economy works, my English isn't very good so lets hope I can do this...

So in the game:
=> 12~ items drop a week, usually weapons
=> 2 weapons = 1 scrap metal
=> 3 scrap metal = 1 reclaimed metal
=> 3 reclaimed metal = 1 refined metal

You can craft these items yourself. This was introduced before the Mannconomy update, the purpose of this was to help people who had their backpacks full of spare items. The objective of this was to craft 3 refined metal into a random hat. Now people don't do this anymore because you can trade metal for hats and they are usually cheaper than 3 refined, so you can get the hat you want without risking to "rolling the dice" and getting a shitty hat you didn't want.

So, when the store was introduced you could buy keys for $2.50. The price in metal of the keys was a bit weird at first but now that people have figured it out they go for 2.4~ refined(a.k.a. 2 refined 1 reclaimed 1 scrap). That also means that the same way you could buy a key for 2.50 you can now buy 2.4 refined for 2.50, right? (this price is a bit different than this, a bit lower, the keys on the black market go for like $1.90 I think).

The price of everything is established from this simple point. Earbuds, a promotional item added on the Mac update(which can't be obtained anymore) go for like 15 keys($28~), Bill's hat, another promo item from L4D goes for around 7 keys.... You can see the price list in metal in www.billsandbuds.com if you have any interest.

So, why do people sell games for items? To make profit. Before Steam trading was added people would trade items for money most of the time. You could also sell for games but it was WAY less common than it is now, and it was also not really safe because you had to trust the folk you're trading with(he could just run away with the "money" and not send you the game gift and that kind of stuff). But this also meant people traded X game for Y item in the same way they would do for money, the price was equal. Now people sell games for more than they're worth in items, you can sell a game for items then sell those items for money and make profit. Why? Because it's the way the "regular" people trade items for "money", and because they have no other way to do it the sellers abuse of them.

AAaaand... This is getting wall-of-text-ish so lets just say the people who sell games for items don't really want the hat or whatever, not in 80% of the trades. People want money IRL and in TF2, get over it.

I hope this clarifies something about the "cultural young person thing".

^ Just noticed I forgot to explain why keys are any important at all or what they do, but meh.

Generally, it's simple. Say the hat's worth 60 or 70 dollars to the TF2 fans. They bought a variety of triple A items in the winter sale for 30 bucks or so. Get a hat, and say when Metro last last or Bioshock Infinite comes out, they can find someone that willl give it to them for that, saving them a decent chunk of change.

It's the same with games. I bought a 13 dollar sale game that was 40 bucks normally. I traded it a bit later for a 40 buck game that went on sale for 20 bucks. So I saved a couple bucks in the end. That's generally all people are doing (of the non CD-key variety). Not all trading done is based on extra games from 4 packs or the crap the holiday sale achievements handed out. Some people can and do make a decent profit (or rather save themselves some money) by doing it.

I don't give away AAA titles as my budget doesn't really allow for it, but I actually get a really big kick out of making a random internet stranger happy. Maybe these people are the same but with more disposable income?

And if someone offered me an AAA title for a stupid hat, I'd be all over it.