PSA: If you want a skin, JUST BUY IT.

IF YOU WANT A SKIN BUY IT FROM THE MARKETPLACE. NO MATTER HOW EXPENSIVE IT IS, IT IS CHEAPER THAN OPENING LOOT BOXES.

I'll put it right there to make things clear. Do. Not. Buy. Loot. Boxes. If you want to spend 10 bucks here and there and consider it lost money for fun, whatever. But don't go chasing items, if you can't afford to buy them at the going rate on the marketplace then you cannot afford them. It is a virtual certainty that you will spend more money in small chunks on boxes/keys than you would just buying the skins you want.

I know it's tempting to say "well I'm not paying 100 bucks for a skin! I'll open this box for a couple bucks instead and try to get it that way...". 50 boxes later you'll have less money than if you'd just bought the thing and you won't even have the damn skin.

I play CS, have done for the last 15 years. As an adult with a disposable income, I'm perfectly happy to buy pointless virtual items now and then to snazz my game up a tad, especially when it's one I've gotten so many hours out of. My CS inventory is worth about 200 bucks and guess what it cost me? You guessed it.. about 200 bucks. The most expensive item of which was a knife for around 100, the rest are anywhere from 3 bucks to about 15.

I don't buy the latest and greatest skin the day it drops, I wait a few months for the prices to stabilise and become reasonable before picking something up.. aside from anything else this greatly increases the odds of me being able sell that stuff off and get most of my money back should I decide to do so... you can't do that if you buy a $1000 the day it comes out and you definitely can't do it if you opened 500 loot boxes and picked up 500 items worth 3 cents each.

There's nothing overly impressive in my inventory.. just a bunch of skins I personally think look really nice and that I want on the weapons I use. But I am constantly having kids comment about my cool knife or AK-47 skin and asked how many boxes it took me to get all my stuff. Their minds are utterly blown when I explain to them I didn't open any and that I just paid for them... usually that's about when they tell me what they've sunk into crates. They often comment about how they'd never "pay 100 bucks for a knife", completely missing the fact that they've instead paid significantly more than that to not have a knife skin. I've run into plenty of people that have wasted more money than their entire computer is worth... meanwhile they're running around with a shitty computer, no skins and no money.

It's just not worth it and quite frankly should be regulated a lot more than it currently is... but that's a completely different discussion altogether.

So to summarise:

1. Don't buy loot boxes or keys.
2. Figure out which skins you want and if they're reasonably priced in the marketplace? Buy them.
3. Don't buy loot boxes or keys.
4. If you cannot afford the skin from the marketplace, you can't afford it.
5. Don't buy loot boxes or keys.
6. Wait a while for prices to stabilise before you look at buying a skin.
7. Don't buy loot boxes or keys.

EDIT: BUT IF WE DON'T KEEP BUYING LOOTBOXES THE MARKETPLACE PRICES WILL RISE AND WE CAN'T GET SKINS!

This keeps getting said and let me assure you this will not happen. There's two possible scenarios:

1. We all collectively don't buy any crates or keys. Prices might rise temporarily but very shortly afterwards the devs would notice something.. they aren't making any money. Devs get a very small cut of marketplace sales for their games items but the big one is the keys, that's their bread and butter and it's obscenely profitable. If we killed that model by not participating they would look to find a new system that better incentivised players. Assuming we all kept to the same logic and rejected any model that wasn't fairly priced and structured the end result would be a system of cheap skins for everybody. This would be amazing and one day I hope the gaming community actually stands up and does this, but I'm not holding my breath.
2. What will actually happen: no matter how many people listen to me or the many other people who have said the same thing, there are always going to be hundreds of thousands (or in PUBGs case most likely millions) of players who won't listen and will pour ungodly amounts of money into lootboxes/keys hoping to get lucky. Maybe they're rich and bored, maybe they're idiots spending money they don't have, whatever. But rest assured that if 100% of people who view this thread immediately gave up lootboxes forever it won't make the slightest dent in the system.. but it would certainly help all those people not get ripped off.

EDIT: BUT I OPENED ONE BOX AND MADE 500 BUCKS!

And there are people out there who bought one lotto ticket and picked up millions. Just because something is technically possible does not make it probable.. especially when the odds are literally published for you to see and you know how insane the odds are.

But if any of you people who picked up those items and made some cash want to prove me wrong, feel free to sink all of your profits back in to loot boxes and keys. Let me know how that works out for you.