SteamDB revealed on August 7 that there is a new highest level Steam account in the world, supplanting the long-reigning (and somewhat controversial) champ, St4ck. On a recent broadcast, Counter-Strike streamer ohnePixel calculated that this user, stasik, needed to have spent north of $500,000 dollars to reach level 5,101, and he's since pumped that up to 5,960. Stasik also boasts multiple rare Counter-Strike skins commanding nearly $9,000 each, including ones with crude messages and slurs arranged on the side through in-game stickers.
If you're like me, you might be wondering what the hell any of this means, and why someone would pay life changing amounts of money to crank up their Steam profile level. I've had my account for a long time, play a lot of games, but barely interact with Steam as a social media platform, leaving me at a paltry level 14. The real power gamer meta is to purchase trading card boosters and seasonal badges on Steam to juice that number.
Which, it must be said, does not have an immediate practical benefit, just bragging rights for the top power-levelers tracked by SteamDB. It reminds me a lot of NFTs, investing cash into a digital signifier with no tangible value, but potential entry into a strange alternate economy. While it in large part appears to be an absurd form of conspicuous consumption, maintaining a high Steam level does also seem to be a form of networking, a way of proving you're a serious customer amongst the crazy-expensive Counter-Strike skin trading set: "I won't talk business unless you're over Level 100."
OhnePixel typically estimates the value of a profile's Steam level by calculating the cost of badge purchases required to get there. In this case, he eyeballed stasik's off what St4ck paid to reach level 5,000: $500,000-$700,000. Stasik has since raised the account's level even further than when ohnePixel checked in, making the total cost even higher—and that's not even counting the value of other items and skins tied to the account.
Speaking of other items and skins, stasik's Counter-Strike 2 inventory has a bit of a landmine hidden in it. Amid numerous multi-thousand dollar skins, you can find a nearly $9,000 "Factory New" M4A1 Howl with stickers arranged on the side to spell out a racial slur. In addition to being extremely odious and distasteful, the gesture puts stasik's account at risk of a potentially permanent community ban, a particularly absurd move given the sheer amount of money injected into the account.
Stasik declined to speak directly to ohnePixel, but has a public Steam profile and linked Instagram with nearly 15,000 followers, both of which refer to a "Discord Kitten"—another user with the user name "Начальник пыли" (Russian for "Chief of Dust")—with a matching couple's profile that links back to stasik. Both stasik and his presumed paramour list the United Arab Emirates as their country of residence.
Further on, stasik's Steam account also makes reference to another user taking issue with him and other people who speak Russian. A since-deleted comment, preserved in ohnePixel's video, by Reddit user Formal_Palpitation14 on a thread about Stasik's account offers a potential, though unverified explanation.
Claiming to be Steam friends with stasik, they wrote: "He mentioned to me he had some beef ongoing with the guy called MoneyLead [The third highest-level Steam user] and how he told him it's not so easy to level up and hold 1st/2nd place… then he just wanted to show him how easy it actually is if money isn't a problem.
"Now Moneylead deleted/blocked everyone he had in his friends list who was friends with stasik."
Take that with a grain of salt, but it does fit with stasik's vague posting and sudden rise through the Steam level ranks. Regarding stasik's allusion to discrimination against Russian speakers, MoneyLead has a number of Ukranian flag emojis on his profile, and a bio that reads: "Glory to Ukraine. The world must stop this terror." Further down, there is the spoilered message, "Not accept VAC BANED [sic] REP BAN and below level 100 and russian."
This is quite the story, but I'm not sure I can draw any important life lessons from it. I hope these conspicuously wealthy gamers, if they are indeed feuding, can learn to give peace a chance, and I also hope that they stop putting slurs on their Counter-Strike guns.
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