A New Revenue Model in Platform Capitalism. The Counter-Strike Skin System as a Structure for Secondary Exploitation, and the Role of Sign Value in the Shaping of a Logic of Consumption

Abstract

This thesis tries to fill a gap in the regulation school framework around the theorisation of platform capitalism as a new regime of accumulation in the post-Fordist era. Empirical findings in the case of Steam and its Counter-Strike skin system are analysed with theories of secondary exploitation and Baudrillard’s theory of sign value and the system of objects. The Counter-Strike skin system is a system of intangible commodities that through their, with gambling interwoven, design of distribution has developed the characteristics of financial commodities. These characteristics are analysed with these theories to show how a new revenue model has been developed. In this new revenue model, users of the platform are exploited through the consumption of coercive commodities. This revenue model is supported with a logic of consumption that follows that of Baudrillard’s consumption of signs. While the findings suggest the arrival of a new revenue model with an accompanying logic of consumption, strong institutional forms that would make up a mode of regulation seem to be lacking, rather it is the lack of (gambling) regulation that is making the new revenue model possible.