Steam trade

Don't you have to buy cases and keys in CS GO from valve (or who ever created it)? Difference between that and SoT would be that the CS go team got payed in form of keys and cases before the cosmetics got to the 2nd hand market. In SoT 99% of items can be earned in game thus Rare wouldn't benefit from allowing players to sell cosmetics as only people who would benefit from it would be the ones wanting to profit from game they no longer play or cosmetics they never cared about by selling old/rare cosmetics worth hundreds of euros like certain obsidian items, ferryman items or sapphire blade pieces.

I may be wrong but if I remember right one of the factors that made Rare stop creating physical obsidian codes was that they didn't want people to sell them on ebay for hundreds of euros and profit from something they got for free.

@muarembossi I have total of 37h in counter strike for last 4 or so years so I don't know any more than you do.

To my understanding in CSGO you can get cases when you win games, but to open one you'll have to buy a key from steam store for 2,50€ or from 3rd person but even that case (no pun intended) the key was originally bought for 2,50€.
What this means, is that the developers make 2,50€ for every cosmetic that has been gotten from case.
You can get some low tier cosmetics by simply playing but they're not worth much, only a couple cents which means a) there're plenty of them going around and b) they're not sought after.

In CS go you have extremely low change of getting lengendary tier cosmetics from cases that are worth thousands in 2nd hand market just due to the fact they're rare. So the crate system is just paying money for a change of making more (with rare cosmetics) and at leas I would count is as gambling.

As we've gone through how it works in CS go we can use what we've learned with it and compare it to SoT.

In SoT all cosmetics are earned by player without spending a single €, well all expect some promotion codes that came with Rare store items and PE (Pirate Emporium) items.
Because SoT has time limited items which can't be gotten through any way (like hungering speaking trumpet or bonecrusher hull) there is no way to get one. But if players could buy them from others the ones who want one could buy them from players who have them. Because there would only be limited amount of them sailing around their prices would rise up with the demand, unlike with items that can be earned easily like ashen hull or low tier cosmetics in CS go because people would constantly unlock them and buying them would make little to no sense.

TL:DR, Valve makes money for each cosmetic you open from case (that can be sold by 3rd party but even then valve got their money from it) where as with SoT only cosmetics sold by Rare are the ones in PE which most people wouldn't be buying from other to begin with, meaning they wouldn't profit from this at all.