I'm not defending anyone, I'd rather you pay for your game and that is it, how it used to be before the 2010s rolled around. I despise micro/macrotransactions, battle passes, the cosmetic trend, FOMO content, I could rant about it all day and how fucked it is.
I was just picking my best of the worst. I see you don't understand how CS skins work, so I'll try to explain.
Anyone can design a skin for a weapon and put this on the Steam Workshop.
People then vote on their favourite skins, eventually Valve make a new case and look through skins to add them to the case,
Everytime a key for that case is bought the creators get a cut.
Everytime a creators skin is bought/sold between players, they get a cut.
I can open the case with a key and hope I get a skin I want. Gambling.
I can buy the exact skin I want directly off the Steam Market... and be done with it
I can trade other players for an exact skin I want.
I can sell that skin again on the Steam Market (Valve gets 15% cut, of which some goes to skin creator as prev. mentioned).
I can trade that skin to friends/other players, for free or for something they own.
So I get a lot more freedom with my new cosmetic item vs another game:
Skin made in-house.
Buy skin from store.
Maybe I can refund if they have the option, if they do it's usually limited.
Or
Buy loot box
I now have skin I cannot trade, sell or do anything with but use.
So yeah, I think Valve have the best of the worst predatory cosmetic systems out there. That's not defending the practice, I'd MUCH rather the whole cosmetic trend fucked off along with the microtransactions and online systems in singleplayer games and the list could go on...
(Edit: Lmao at you editing and putting 'for 50 cent' in there)