Probably one of the biggest mistakes you can make in this day and age, is to underestimate the potential of a gamer, or coder for that matter. Some smart guys in Montreal have put their gaming caps on, and hhave created a website called OPskins, that sells virtual skins for various weapons in the PC game Counter-Strike. You might ask, what is the big deal? And I might tell you, one of their knife skins sold for over $5,000, these two guys are bringing in over $12,000 a day at times, and over 370,000 CS gamers have purchased from them. In fact, for an upcoming CS gaming convention in Montreal, the company is investing over $100,000 for the event, to give back to the community. However this is my favorite part of the article, that one of the guys is still living in his parents basement… I’m sorry… But the money and the basement isn’t computing very well with me, unless his parents are charging him rent!

The men say they started their venture because players were getting scammed selling their virtual weapons online outside of the Steam Community Market, the hugely popular marketplace owned by Counter-Strike’s developer Valve.

“People used to sell their guns directly on forums”, said Minacov. “The buyer would pay via Paypal, but afterwards, would chargeback as soon as he got his item. So people who sold the weapon were getting scammed. The community wasn’t happy about it, so we tried to find a solution.”

The reason some users have attempted to sell items outside of Valve’s official marketplace is simple: When a user sells an item through Valve’s marketplace, they can only use the proceeds to buy other weapon skins, or new games on Steam, said Minacov, who runs the company from his parent’s basement.

“With us, people cash out the money they are getting from each sale. Some can make a lot of money out of it,” he explained.

I also wouldn’t underestimate the interest in firearms when it comes to gaming. I’m sure many of the millennials reading this blog, to include myself, were first exposed to a wide variety of firearms via the video games we grew up playing, to include Counter-Strike, the Medal of Honor series, and the Battlefields. I mean, to use myself as an example, I started constructing the firearms in Counter-Strike, and then Medal of Honor Allied Assault from pieces of plastic cardboard and duct tape because I couldn’t have access to the “real steel”. I later graduated to airsoft, which then lead to pellet guns, and eventually when I turned 18, I bought my first .22 rifle. Almost two dozen firearms later, and I can’t rid the bug. But I would be kidding myself if I were to say that those first person shooters didn’t play a part in cultivating the interest.