The new economics of Counter-Strike

In an effort to ensure a more diverse usage of armaments, Valve is implementing a Dynamic Weapon Pricing system into Counter-Strike: Source. Essentially, all guns are divided into two categories: pistols and everything else. Within each category, data is collected from the servers as to how much money is spent on each gun. Every Monday, the price of guns will be adjusted to correlate with its popularity from the previous week -- the higher its demand, the higher its price.

With this system, Counter-Strike users will be able to balance the game through their habits. Players will continue to have a starting bank of $800, but each week will be forced to tweak their strategy in order to accommodate for market trends. The MAC-10, for example, is on a downward trend and the price is falling. As soon as the gun becomes viable for its respective price range, the demand will increase. Eventually, we foresee, an equilibrium will be reached where the change in price from week to week will be marginal.

The projected value of each gun and piece of equipment can be tracked on the DWP market page, where Valve has also provided a more in-depth explanation of their price-adjusting algorithm.

[Via Pro-G]