[updated] Digital toilet paper demand soars on Steam

[Update]: As of writing this article the prices were roughly accurate, as of publishing it the price of the Steam Awards Toilet Paper emote has dropped down to a more sensible but still higher than before $0.26 each. Costume Quest TP emotes still remain sold out as are Crappy Day Enhanced Edition emotes
Ok so I sometimes like to cover weird things that happen but this one really is weird beyond normal bounds. In the UK and USA toilet paper has been selling out many places and some people have been struggling to find any. This shortage is seemingly a mix of people stocking up to avoid having to go out as the Coronavirus spreads with others mass buying toilet paper to scalp (sell on at higher prices) on the internet. No really people are doing that.

However this piece is NOT on about the Coronavirus, Covid-19  or real world toilet paper shortages really. This is about Steam seeing a massive increase in the price of Toilet paper emoticons and while some people might joke that "Oh course Steam is now having a toilet paper shortage look at all the shitty games being released." It's actually a strange thing worth documenting beyond just making that joke.

For those who don't know and somehow wondered here from other parts of the web and are not into video games here's a quick catch up. Steam is a digital games store that along with games has a community marketplace for selling digital items. Developers of games can set things up so their games will drop items or Steam trading cards. If you collect a full set of Trading cards for a game by buying them on the community marketplace or by trading them with friends you then get a badge for you profile, a background you can use to customise your profile and an emoticon you can use in chat or on Steam's forums. You can sell these emoticons on to other or buy the ones you want often for mere pennies. With Valve and the developers of said games taking a cut of the sales money from the items.

Now I was found out about this thanks to Sentinels of the Store member and youtube lets player SkidRowTrash who found out about this on Reddit so credit to them. It seems in a strange move that there has been a sudden rise in demand and subsequent asking price for the Toilet Paper Emoticon that was given out in 2017 as one of a number of possible emoticons to people who collected the Free Steam awards trading cards for The Steam awards event in 2017. The price of the emoticon has jumped from it selling at $0.04 to $2.55 in just one day. It seems suddenly the comedy value of being able to have a toilet paper emoticon on Steam has shot up just showing the insane things that can happen due to a mix of real life event and internet humour and memes. Or possibly just one person on reddit doing it to give everyone a laugh for a bit.

However as SkidRowTrash also said it's not only the toilet paper emoticon that Valve gave away before that is seeing a rise in demand. Looking on the Steam Marketplace you can find that the toilet paper emoticon for the Double Fine game Costume Quest has entirely sold out with the entirety of marketplace listings selling out in 1 day and seeing the price jump from $0.03 to $0.07 before the entire market supply on sale was sold. 

Other games with toilet paper emoticons have seen the price of their emoticons jump to with Crappy Day Enhanced Edition seeing it's emoticon jump from $0.28 to $1.35 almost overnight which now means a single emoticon from said game is worth over 2/3rd the price of buying the game itself. 

I think it's also worth talking about other emoticons on Steam that have seen high demand or fetch a high price as some people might find it interesting.

First up is Port Royale 3's Weed emote which has consistently sold for between $2.50 and over $3 on Steam due pretty much to demand from people wanting to buy it. 

Next of the PC master Race Emoticon for the game Hatfall which sells between $0.50 and just over $1 consistently

It's also worth mentioning that the Console Peasant wallpaper from Hatfall sells for anything between $4.50 and $6 which means it has been known to sell for more than the games regular selling price of $4.99

Anyway hope you enjoyed this little silly thing I wrote thanks for reading.