The Buff Browser
Browse Buff's collection of helpful blogs as we explore gameplay tips and tricks from the pros, review and recommend the latest games, and take an inside look into loyalty gaming and earning rewards.
RewardsP2P Trade—Buying & Selling In-Game Items for Real $$$The most expensive in-game item ever sold officially was a virtual planet called Planet Calypso, which was sold for $6 million in a game called Entropia Universe.
The planet in question is super lucrative and made over $400 million in the year 2010 with in-game transactions. This shows that people are willing to pay exorbitant amounts for rare in-game items, or things in-game that add benefit to the gameplay.
If you're lucky enough to have gotten a super rare item in a crate opening or a roll, then it's well worth considering selling the item for some real-world cash.
» There are more ways to make real money from playing games
How to Trade In-Game Items for Real Money
There are a few different ways to go about selling your items if you're feeling up for exchanging your rare goodies for some real-world cash. Some marketplaces are more popular than others, depending on the title of the game, and could result in much higher sales if you find the right place.
Trading via Steam
If you have a Steam game that has items that you can sell, selling via the Steam marketplace is by far the safest way to do it. There are a few prerequisites to setting up your account to be eligible to sell items on the marketplace:
Your account has to be non-limited (meaning you have to own a game worth at least $5 or have had at least $5 in your steam wallet). Your steam account has to be protected by Steam Guard (this involves 2-step verification with a cellular device) for at least 15 days.You need to have some funds available in your steam account.You need to own at least one marketable item.
If you meet these prerequisites, selling an item on the Steam marketplace is really easy.
Open Inventory in your Steam account.Find the item you'd like to sell, click on it, and find the 'sell' button under the item's description (If there's no sell button, the item isn't marketable).Check the graph showing previous sales of the item to set its price (when deciding on the price, keep in mind that Steam will take a small portion of the sale).Agree to the terms and services, and put it up for sale (if you haven't used your mobile authenticator for a week, your item will only be listed for 15 days).Check your email—you might receive an email from Steam requiring you to further authenticate the sale.
If you'd like to check the items you have listed, head over to the market under the community tab, and under 'My Active Listings' you'll find your item and its price. If it says your item is on hold—don't panic. Steam puts a delay on marketplace postings and trade items.
Trading via an External Marketplace
Trading via 3rd party marketplaces can be risky, and if you're not sure where to go, ask friends and other gamers, and double-check if that site is safe before going ahead with a sale of an item.
Keep in mind that these 3rd party sites often require you to log into your Steam account, and if you're at a malicious site, it could mean losing all of your accounts inventory. Be careful, especially if you have items such as CS:GO knives.
Considerations for Identifying a Reliable Marketplace
If you're having doubts about whether a site is legit or not, there are a few ways you can check up on the site's reliability.
Check if it has a trusted platform for taking care of its users, and google the reliability of the site and its methods.Make sure the site guarantees the safety of both parties' privacy as well as inventory security.Ask around or turn to Reddit to find out which sites are viable for what you want to sell.
BONUS: In-Game Items Commonly Favored by Buyers
Got a bunch of items and you're not sure what's good to sell or what people want to buy? Here are some tips on what to look out for when selling an item.
Accessories & Cosmetics
Most sought-after cosmetics are usually a high tier/rarity, or items that are from limited-time events. Keep an eye out for tags like 'Legendary,' 'Epic,' 'Factory New,' 'Limited,' etc. One game using such tags is CS:GO, for which we also compiled a list of its best weapon skins.
Equipment & Weapons
The best-selling equipment and weapons are those with the highest stats or best rolls. In Diablo 3, a player sold a weapon called 'Echoing Fury,' a mace that isn't that amazing but it had the highest possible rolls of that weapon, for $14000. It wouldn't be a surprise at all to see similar transactions happening in Blizzard's next release, Diablo 4.
Materials & Resources
Sometimes farming for materials is too much of a grind, so some players are willing to buy them on marketplaces. If you've got some spare useful resources or some shiny gems that you're holding onto, you might score some actual cash by selling them to other players.
Aside from trading, you can get your hands on passive income by playing your favorite games. Run Buff while you're gaming for some sweet free rewards.
Buff faqsDota 2 Account Boosting: What It Is & Why You Need to Avoid ItEvery so often, taking a shortcut can mean gaining an unfair advantage over other people, and in the case of Dota 2 account boosting, it means causing negative impacts on your team play and the quality of your games.
» Learn how to sell your Dota 2 skins on Steam
Account Boosting
There's no dodging the fact that learning and mastering Dota 2 and climbing the ranks in the MOBA takes a long, long time. Like in many other online competitive games, Valve has a simple rating system to measure your potential rank amongst thousands of other players called MMR (matchmaking rating).
So far, there are 8 ranks in total, and every rank is split into 5 tiers. Players will earn a badge when reaching these tiers as they earn enough MMR, and can display and show off these badges publicly. Here's a breakdown of how much MMR is needed per rank:
Herald 0 - 616 MMRGuardian 770 - 1,386 MMRCrusader 1,540 - 2,156 MMRArchon 2,310 - 2,926 MMRLegend 3,080 - 3,696 MMRAncient 3,850 - 4,466 MMRDivine 4,620 - 5,420 MMRImmortal 5420+ MMR
Your rank represents how good you are at Dota 2 and the respective badges you own show other people you are a skilled player. However, some players aren't quite happy with where they're placed and are too tempted by a cheeky (and bannable) tactic called account boosting. This allows them to climb through the tiers to higher ranks without actually earning those placements through the effort that's required to get there.
Account boosting isn't legal in Dota 2 and violates the terms of service you agree to when you play the game for the first time. Unfortunately, that doesn't stop loads of websites from advertising account boosting, and thousands of pros who are willing to boost low-ranked accounts for a certain price.
How It Works
Essentially, a player who has a low rank, or one who isn't happy with their current rank, will give their account over to another person or bot, who will then climb through ranks on their behalf.
There are a few methods to boost accounts and all of them are frowned upon.
Getting a friend or pro rank up for you: This seems to be tempting enough that people are willing to pay pros to play on their accounts and soar through the ranks. Smurfing: Even more tempting than getting your rank boosted by a pro, is being the pro getting paid to cheat the system by boosting accounts. Using a bot: Players who have been previously reported are moved to low-priority queues—and some 'hire' a bot to take their account out of low-priority lobbies.
Implications on Game Play
There's a reason Valve is trying to stomp on this behavior—not only is it unfair to players who climb legitimately, but it also causes huge balancing issues for many players' matches, and often for many matches too.
Imagine you get a teamie who's been boosted all the way from Guardian to where you are in Ancient and has no idea how to play the game properly. That player would be a liability to the team and would continue to weigh down his teammates.
Though the idea of quickly excelling to a high rank and slipping past all the trouble of grinding seems like an exciting idea to some, it really ruins the game for those players who have genuine intentions and are there to play fairly.
Players who have their account boosted also tend to skip past essential lessons about the game that are learned by climbing through the ranks at a regular pace.
Consequences of Account Boosting in Dota 2
If the idea of ruining the game for themselves and other players doesn't sway cheeky gamers from account boosting in Dota 2, Valve has some lovely measures in place.
Dota 2 has in-game bans for offenses like toxic behavior and leaving matches early, and depending on how often you earn these bans, they can stack up from 10 min to 6 months—but account boosting incurs much bigger wrath from Valve: the VAC ban, a year-long ban.
Final Words
It's definitely not worth it to go through the incredible risk of having a VAC ban just to have your account boosted by a pro you had to pay. On top of that, you're just going to suffer each ranked game you play because you're not where you're supposed to be. There's a reason Valve made account boosting illegal, so be a team player and stay on your own account.
While you're sweating it out while climbing the ranks in Dota 2, why not have Buff open in the back to earn some sweet free rewards?
Esports5 Legitimate Ways to Make Real Money From Playing GamesIf artists and musicians can get paid for doing what they are passionate about, why not gamers too? As the gaming industry continues to grow, it's becoming very possible to do just that: make real money from playing games!
If you're thinking of getting serious about this, we've made a list of some of the legitimate ways people have made real money from the gaming world so that you can turn your favorite hobby into an income.
1. Stream Your Gameplay on Twitch/YouTube
One of the most popular ways to make money by playing games online is to stream your content using Twitch or YouTube, and starting up is pretty easy! Both sights have a well-written startup guide to get the ball rolling (Twitch or YouTube), but you'll need more than a fresh account to start making some real income.
Here are 3 big tips that we've learned that make a YouTube or Twitch steam more successful:
Tip #1: Find a Unique Way to Present Content
Let's be honest, there are already thousands of gamers streaming COD, Battlefield, LoL, and all the other games we love playing. In such a saturated market, we have to find something unique that makes people click on our streams and stay there. There are many ways to do this, but unfortunately, no one can tell you what your unique feature should be.
For example, some people are naturally funny and have comedic themes in their streams, some put on personas like Dr. Disrespect, an overly aggressive role-playing gamer, and some streamers are just absolute pros that are too good to even need personalities.
Tip #2: Make a Schedule
So here's a scenario: you've had a bunch of viewers that stumbled across your stream, liked your content enough to follow your channel (great!), but they have no idea when your next stream is going to happen, so they accidentally miss it.
That sucks for both you and your viewers, so it's important to have a schedule to let your viewers know that you—hypothetically—stream every Friday at 19:00. Post the schedule to your homepage so that everyone knows what to expect.
Tip #3: Consistency Is Key
We've seen streamers that have put hundreds of hours into their streams without much success, just because they never made their "recipe" work for them. If you're playing games in one stream, then doing artwork in the next, then your gaming viewers might not be interested in your art stream, and vice versa. Make sure that your viewers know what they're up for when they hop into your next stream.
If you enjoy doing a variety of different streams, consider separating them into different days or times, such as art on Tuesdays and games on Thursdays and Fridays.
2. Join a Platform That Rewards You for Playing
Did you know you can earn free rewards by playing the games you're already playing? I know, sounds too good to be true, right? However, there are free platforms out there like Buff that reward you simply for playing the games you already play! Playing earns Buff Points that you can spend on real-world items like PC peripherals and gift cards. Additionally, Buff gives you weekly and daily challenges you can complete to earn those points, and it's completely legit.
You might be thinking "well what does Buff get out of it?"
Buff primarily receives revenue from ads and premium subscriptions to the service, so you aren't impacted at all.
» Ready for some free rewards? Get Buff now!
3. Create Video Game Tutorials & Guides
We've all had that moment before when we think "man, I wish I knew that earlier," or "why isn't this common knowledge?" If you feel like you could teach a few tips and tricks to people on the game you've been playing, making tutorials or guides is a good way to help those people out and make some money doing it!
YouTube is an extremely popular platform to post tutorials and guides onto, and getting an account started there is fairly simple. The trick is learning to efficiently record your content—we recommend free software like OBS for this—and editing your footage in a way that makes it entertaining for the duration of your tutorial.
After enough people subscribe and watch your videos, you will be able to monetize your channel and start earning passive income from all your videos, new and old.
4. Compete in eSports Tournaments
If you've found yourself feeling like you've mastered your game—like you're always carrying your team and could compete with anyone—then maybe it's time to try and sign up for a professional eSports team.
The eSports scene is huge, and growing bigger every year, so the search for the best players in the competitive titles means that there's an ever-growing opportunity to sign up and compete in major tournaments for huge prize money. You'll be up against the best of the best here, so get ready to sweat for those rewards.
Some eSports organizations create teams in multiple games, while others are limited to one game. Finding one to join will be different for each game, so you'll have to do some research about how different eSports organizations recruit their players.
» Want to become an eSports pro? Take a look at the games with the biggest eSports prize pools.
5. Establish a Video Game Coaching Business
So you've mastered your game, but you don't want the stress of eSports publicity, or maybe you're feeling too old to compete (the average peak age for eSports players is 19-22) or maybe you just want to get paid to help people improve, then consider becoming a coach and privately train players to gain a competitive advantage.
The easiest way to get started with coaching is to sign up for a coaching platform, such as GamerSensei, Pro Guides, or freelance platforms like Fiverr.
Start Earning Now
Turning your gaming hobby into an income has never been more possible than it is today. Not only do each of the methods above provide viable ways to make some money, but you can also do all of them at the same to maximize your earning potential. The only thing holding you back is the amount of time and effort you put into making this a reality, so you better start soon!
