As ever with these trends, copycats have started springing up.
No one is playing any of these games because they're 'fun' they're doing it for the skins. It would be kind of funny if what ends up killing the skin market overall would be these idle clicker games unless Valve decides to have a clamp down.
I'm still pondering the maths behind the trend a bit, with botting and cheating it's definitely going to be worth it for some people to do this. All I know is as far as I'm concerned multiplayer gaming that has any kind of micro-transactions like this are massively dead to me and these idle clickers are clearly an exploit people have found in the market.
Edit: There's a third copycat game that I didn't notice LOL, the cancer is spreading
https://store.steampowered.com/app/3015610/Banana__Cucumber/#app_reviews_hash
I still think it's much ado about nothing. Maybe I'm missing something, but someone has to be buying the skins for any of this to work.
It's basically NFT-like market speculation, but done within the marketplace and cutting Steam in on the profits.
If all these stories weren't propping it up as, "lol, banana!" it would have collapsed already.
It would be a harmless shitpost of an idea if it weren't for the top game charts. Block it from charting it and let people have their stupid fun.
I should tell you something I remember hearing from Cryptobros. They would often use steam's item trading marketplace as a sort of sign that NFTs could work, saying that their version was open source and free of DRM. However, I think that this entire fiasco could be seen as a warning sign of why this example could be turned against them, especially considering the CSGO skin gambling debacles, and I don't think they know how to solve most of the problems that already exist with steam's marketplace.
If mainstream media is reporting on something like this without shitting on it, it's not important enough to worry about and is a distraction from things that are.
This is the thing about getting on the trending pages, if you even get one or two mentions it creates a snowballing effect. The worse people for this are the 'commentators' they'll see this shit pop up on the news articles and start talking about. This in turn generates more interest and more idiots will install it and try to click on it which is exactly what the devs are counting on.
I mean, I admire the hustle in a way, it's just obviously not a video game and none of these marketplaces or live service products can ever be classed as that. Hell, even the ones that technically are games these days sort of do the most half-arsed and limited gameplay possible then spend the rest of their time on customisation.