Skin Overview

In this projected, I used a LSTM network to predict CSGO skin prices, based on past prices and trends. To ensure that the network gives more accurate predictions, have I done a little work on the data it receives. I have taken the average price over 4 hours and used that as the input for the network. I did this, because i noticed that a couple of skins could sometimes be sold for a price that is let us say 10 times higher than the skin is normally sold for.

During the project, I realized a problem i would encounter when using the program. To put it simply, would it be near impossible to earn money with the program, unless the program itself could sell the skins. This is because Steam and other websites where skins can be sold, take a fee for letting you sell your skin on their sides. This fee is typically something like 15% of what you are trying to sell the skin for. So when you sell a skin for let us say 60$, the price the buyer is paying is 69$. This poses a problem, where you as a seller will almost never be able to earn money on selling skins, unless the price of the skin has rocketed, since you initially bought it. Let us say that you by a skin at the price of 100$. Then for you to earn anything from buying that skin, somebody has to pay over 115$ for that exact skin. So events where skins can be bought cheap and others where they can be sold high are import. But these events are typically far apart, and a human will earn next to nothing from watching the market 24/7. This is where the bots come in. If you could make a bot that could watch, buy and sell skins on the market, that would theoretically make it possible to earn money from buying and selling skins. But this is impossible on Steam, since Steam generally doesn't like bots on their markets, and the fee on other websites are even worse, than it is on Steam.

Because of the points previously stated, have I chosen to put this program on my website. The program can watch the Steam market, and make predictions as to how to market will evolve. It was a fun project, but the program itself has no value. It is merely a fun little tool that can analyze the Steam skin market.

Download Guide

You can download the project here. When you have downloaded the project, you need to first install node. You can do that here. You then need to install some libraries that were too big for me to include in the project. To do that, you need to open the command prompt and move to the project directory. From there, you can type in the following commands.

npm install @tensorflow/tfjs-node

If you want to use the GPU to do the calculations in the network instead of your CPU, then use the following command as well. Do only this if you have a NVIDIA GPU with CUDA support. You can read more about tensorflows GPU support here

npm install @tensorflow/tfjs-node-gpu

Now the project have been set up. You run the program by using the following command in the command prompt, while in the project directory

node app

From there you can open a browser and type in the following URL in the top.

localhost:3000

If you would like to change some settings, then find them in the file app.js. This file can be opened and changed in the noteblock or any other text editor you would prefer. Have fun😉.