Valve Just Completely Destroyed Counter-Strike 2’s Skins & Knives Market

Counter-Strike 2 is comfortably the most played game on Steam most days, consistently sitting at over one million players. Unlike many games that come and go, CS2 rarely drops out of the top few slots on the Steam player charts, making it a huge money-maker for developer Valve. That’s especially true when you consider how popular Counter-Strike 2‘s loot boxes are. Recently, Valve dropped a new update into Counter-Strike 2, which has totally upended the massive skin and knife market.

The update, first noticed by the team at Eurogamer, made what seems like a small change. Now, Counter-Strike 2 players can trade five regular Covert skins for a new, rarer knife or glove cosmetic. On the surface, that might seem like nothing, but you have to remember that these skins can be traded on the Steam market. Some of those skins can sell for hundreds of dollars because you previously had to open loot crates to “earn” a new skin.

Counter-Strike 2‘s “Small Update” Takes Billions Out of the Market

Now that you can recycle unwanted skins, those prices have dropped off a cliff. According to Price Empire, a website that analyzes the CS2 market, the skin market has dropped by just over 28 percent. Doing the math, that means Valve’s “small update” has wiped around $2 billion off the market in less than a week.

This puts players in a weird position. If you’re someone who casually plays Counter-Strike 2, it’ll be much easier to acquire a few of the more popular skins now. However, if you’ve been investing in the market, this update could potentially be devastating.

It might sound unlikely, but there are players out there who treat the CS2 market like the stock market, using it to trade and invest. Those players have now seen a huge chunk of their investment wiped out by a single decision from Valve. For most, this is going to be a great change that makes earning top-end skins much easier, but Counter-Strike 2 whales have been left holding the bag.

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Depending on which side you fall on, you’re going to have differing views on this change. Just check the Counter-Strike 2 forums to see the backlash against the move from dedicated players and investors. Everyone else is going to reap the benefits, but it’s hard not to feel a little bad for players who invested in the market, even if it always did feel a little like a house of cards that could fall apart at any minute.

It’ll be interesting to see where Valve goes from here. It’s highly unlikely they’ll rollback the changes, but the community backlash from the loudest members has been particularly harsh. Will we see the team do something to swing the market back the other way slightly, or is this a sign that Valve wants to kill the market even more? We probably won’t know the full ramifications for a few months, but it’s a situation worth keeping an eye on.

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