I was away when they finally dropped the Cologne 2026 major update. I stayed up late twice in a row, waiting for either the Armory or Cologne update to finally dropped. Not gonna lie, I was quite dissapointed. I don't understand why Valve would change from a fixed price to now be based on demand.
Anyways, I went looking back and found some interesting history. My first ever major I watched and bought the pass for was Atlanta 2017. Back in the day you could buy a Mega bundle. It included quite a few things as seen in the screenshot:
- One sticker for each of the 16 participating teams.
- One graffiti for each of the 16 participating teams.
- One player autograph capsule for each of the 16 participating teams.
- One ELEAGUE sticker.
- One ELEAGUE graffiti
All this for 50$, which was later discounted down by 80% (to roughly 10$)
You of course also had capsules. They were expensive, up until RMR 2020 I believe, when they changed it so that every capsule is 1$ and then reduced to 0.25$.
Now, you need to bid on items and if you want something popular, tough luck. Pray that the prices will drop down by 75% at the end of the major or for another market crash. People may not have liked the old system, but you could have gotten lucky and gotten a really good sticker. Hopefully, the price will go down as the market saturates…
Screenshoot is from this video.