Will Chinese CS:GO publisher Perfect World blackmail Valve?

Perfect World is the official Chinese publisher of CS:GO in China, who has now made an announcement that the community has absolutely no understanding for. Yesterday, the publisher announced that it is opening its own shop. The market platform will be in a test phase and only Chinese players can access it at the moment. 

The catch to the whole story is the fact that alongside the P2P network, instant bot delivery is offered through the exclusive gifting feature. You don’t even have to make a trading offer for this. It caught the eye of skin trader Rambofight, who tweeted about it. What does this mean for CS:GO trading?

Why is Perfect World opening the real money marketplace?

The gifting feature has long been a part of the game code, but has actually only been used once and by Perfect World. But why would the publisher open an officially supported market for real money? While we can’t say for sure, Rambofight has a very specific guess, which he shared on Twitter.

He believes that China “doesn’t like the dodgy goings on at BUFF” and that “with their own marketplace they can set the rules themselves and have much better control over users and the flow of money.” The skin trader himself admits that his suspicions sound like a conspiracy theory, but explains that the reality might not be that far from his assumptions.

Does China want to blackmail Valve?

Over the past few years, BUFF, a platform for gamers that rewards you for gambling, has been restricted more and more. With BUFF you can play the games that love and earn buffs in the process. If you have enough buffs, you can exchange them for items on the marketplace. An identification process has been introduced for money transfers or the latest update, in which the customer accounts are verified. Rambofight also points out that skins can be used to get large sums of money out of China.