A weird phenomenon is happening around here. People are going all over around backpack.tf downvoting everything decreasing value of metal and increasing value of keys, and making suggestions "trying to decrease value of keys" all in order to "stop the economy from crashing".

Economic crash? Team Fortress 2?

Now that's a weird thing. Like, how can video game economy be the same as real life economy? You know, sometimes, people blend video game stuff with the real things. And that's a definite fact.
So, how would the TF2 economy NOT crash, as i am trying to tell you?

Let's analyze it in the next chapter.

To find out how the economy won't crash, we need to analyze how it works first.
We must know 2 basic things first:

1) There's a virtually infinite amount of resources to get items, unlike real life.
2) There are 3 sources of items

Let's see what the types are:

1) Idlers (Little to no outcome)
2) Inactive Players (Little to medium outcome)
2.1) F2P (Common)
2.2) Premium (Common & Rare)
3) Active Players (Large to max outcome)
3.1) F2P (Common)
3.2) Premium (Common & Rare)

As we all know, we've mostly got active players, so we got many, many, outcome.
People get max 12 items every week, and they don't arrive at one place to be delivered to specific people, like it mostly happens IRL - anyone can get it, as long as they play actively
There's a ton playing, so a ton of items spread idividually along people.

And that is the exact reason, the economy won't crash!
Remember: There are virtually infinite resources and items get given directly to players and major amount of active players!

Before you go, let's talk about another of the cases the previous chapter was talking about... in the next one.

I mentioned Backpack.tf in The Community Complaint. That is mainly because the biggest part gets raged out in that site.

People don't understand backpack.tf REFLECTS prices, it does not SET prices. If it's commonly sold for 1 and a half key, for example, someone gathers proof of solds and unsolds, then the community verifies that it's valid and the trend gets revealed right there.

Nevertheless, there were oh-so-many key and refined metal suggestions requesting appropiate changes (without proof) as "the economy is worsening and we need to get it lower/higher to save it"...

How about no? *sigh*
Remember, backpack.tf REFLECTS prices, it does not SET them. Kapeesh?


--2015 MAJOR ADDITION--
[And now for valuable backpack.tf suggesting advice for begineers, from a disgruntled bp.tf "regular".]


When you make a suggestion on... you know where, increasing or decreasing the price of an item (wether it be keys or not), you have the mindset that... youknowthename is the monopolistic company which sells all of the specific item, so you go like "Eh it's getting a bit rare, we should increase the price..." or "Newbies get no chances to get this item, we should decrease...".

Allow me to repeat that backpack.tf is not what you think. It is a site making it easier for people to sell or buy items by showing to the community the trending price. If we would accept all the proofless suggestions in there, we would have The Amputator up to 1 refined because someone needs to increase his backpack value, the keys to a single refined (like Pepperidge farm remembers it) because we need to return to the olden days, and people would not ever know what's the best price to sell or buy - which would make selling or buying items as hard as trading a stone necklace for 10 bananas with a gorilla.

Thank you for reading all of this, starter or veteran, gentleman or lady.
Please do take your time to read the final chapter.

The conclusion? There's zero chances this economy will go wrong.
If you've noticed recently, the keys have been selling for max 10.66 ref, and while people and some other guides were worried about keys getting sold for MORE than that, it doesn't. You know why? It is not just the sellers. It is also the buyers.
If a seller puts a higher price than usual for an item, eventually he'll notice he doesn't get a sale with that price and decides to follow the current flow.
Of course, it changes due to slowly more and more people wanting to break out of it, ending up changing it all along.

And THAT concludes the whole... umm... guide? If you call this a guide.

--2015 EDIT--

It seems keys rised up to 17 ref (!). however, if you check the price history at bp.tf, you'll notice a very sudden decline on the price appeared (lowering down to 13-13.33 ref), proving i was right about what i said above on the conclusion. Unfortunately, for the most of us who could not afford a key with metal even before rise to 10 ref, keys are having another raise. I'm pretty sure that, someday, keys will lower significantly and stay there for some time. Items can't always have an increasing price, as proven by the Wall Street Crash.

Thank you for (hopefully truly) reading this technically-not-a guide.
Please provide feedback and your thoughts, as this technically-not-a guide WILL be extended on, mainly because people still think we're having an "economic crisis" here in the TF2niverse.
In fact, if you don't feel like providing feedback, why not join the discussion about the TF2 economy raging in the comments?