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Counter-Strike's Player Economy Is In a Multi-Billion Dollar Freefall (polygon.com) 66

Posted by msmash from the how-about-that dept.
Counter-Strike has long been known for two things: tight tactical FPS gameplay and a thriving player marketplace effectively valued at literal billions of dollars. Now, thanks to a recent update from Valve, the latter is in a downward spiral, having lost 25% of its value -- or $1.75 billion -- overnight. Polygon: First, some context. Counter-Strike is a free-to-play multiplayer shooter. As with most other F2P games, it generates revenue from selling cosmetics. They arrive in lootbox-like Cases, which are opened by Keys purchased with real-world currency. They can also be obtained through trading with other players and purchasing from Steam Community Market. Beyond Steam, unofficial third-party marketplaces for CS cosmetics have also popped up as channels for buying and selling items.

Because items are obtained at random through opening Cases, rarer items fetch the highest value on the open marketplaces. Items of lower-rarity tiers can also be traded in at volume for an item of a higher tier via trade up contracts. Previously, Knives and Gloves could not be obtained through trade up contracts, exponentially increasing their value as highly sought-after items. Prior to the most recent update, some Knives, like a Doppler Ruby Butterfly Knife, could fetch around $20,000 on third-party storefronts like CSFloat.

Following Valve's Oct. 22 update to Counter-Strike, the second-highest-tier, Covert (Red), can now be traded up and turned into Knives and Gloves. Essentially, this means that a previously extremely rare and highly sought-after cosmetic is going to be much more obtainable for those who increasingly want it, reducing the value of Knives and Gloves on the open marketplace. And this is where the market descends into a freefall. Now, that Butterfly Knife mentioned above? It's going for around $12,000, as people are essentially dumping their stock, with 15 sold over the past 16 hours at the time of this writing.
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Counter-Strike's Player Economy Is In a Multi-Billion Dollar Freefall More

Counter-Strike's Player Economy Is In a Multi-Billion Dollar Freefall

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  • Promoting gambling to kids (Score:4, Insightful)

    by bjoast ( 1310293 ) on Friday October 24, 2025 @10:09AM (#65747676)
    Why is this even allowed?
  • Ok so imaginary stuff is not worth what is was before? Did they change the drop rate or something?

    I mean it sucks if you just bought a skin, or were about to sell one, but these aren't really assets in a predictable sense.

    • You can trade up lesser items for greater items now, at least in the glove and knife category. So there are effectively more gloves/knives entering the market and diluting the value of those already on sale.

    • Yeah, it's just NFT-equivalents disguised as game items. They're only worth what a bigger sucker and/or money-launderer is willing to give you for them.

  • Clickbait, the other white meat (Score:3)

    by Jeslijar ( 1412729 ) on Friday October 24, 2025 @10:16AM (#65747692) Homepage

    items that cost more than what the marketplace sales cap are now below the market cap because they are more easily earnable while deleting tons and tons and TONS of items costing $20 before, now $100 from the store.

    The "value" erased is like saying a stock on the stock market is worth 2 billion dollars less, but Valve doesn't earn any profit from skins traded via 3rd party sites, and that's what is hit here.

    First party transactions are now generating loads of revenue from transaction fees, bringing the market back to Valve and away from sketchy third party sites.

    At the end of the day I can't comprehend why people are paying for this stuff though. It's just a texture which you could trivially mod in before, at least when I was big into CS in 1.X days and CS:S.

    • At the end of the day I can't comprehend why people are paying for this stuff though. It's just a texture which you could trivially mod in before, at least when I was big into CS in 1.X days and CS:S.

      The knife at least might be a different model rather than just a texture, of course still possible to mod that in. I still struggle to wrap my head around what kind of absolute moron would pay the price of a pretty decent new car for a virtual knife in a free-to-play videgame.

    • Valve does earn money on Steam marketplace transcations, where many CS2 items are traded, even at high dollar values.

  • Is this article talking real money or in-game money? I don't think someone would pay $20,000 to get some some kind of picture in a game? Doesn't make any sense ...

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by cristiroma ( 606375 )

      Nevermind, I just found the answer and it's depressing: Skinport is the easy-to-use skin marketplace for CS:GO/CS2 items that allows you to buy and sell CS:GO/CS2 skins for real money.. People are either dumb or use stolen money.

      • Both. Most people are dumb, and many would use stolen money if they could (and many do, though usually not to buy video game cosmetics).

        Intelligence and morality are both things that people are born without, and have to learn. Some people are born pre-disposed to be good at learning (be that knowledge, virtue, or both), but even so, if they are born into unfortunate circumstances then the things that they will learn will be wrong and harmful.

        So, in order to reach adulthood with sharp intelligence and a fu

        • If you're not dumb and have stolen money, these types of exchanges are ideal for money laundering.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by abulafia ( 7826 )
            Yep. Someone I casually knew a long time ago approached me about an, uh, opportunity. He fancied himself an "in-game asset arbitrager".

            I immediately noped out.

        • I agree that there are probably a lot of profiteers that launder drugs money, but still ... I will assume the rest of 97% are just young people - as someone said below between 18-24 which is student life ... Even if you're dumb - how can throw parent's money or any hard-earned money on these things? You still need to eat, no?

          Too many distraction, ~40 years ago people threw money on things like drink, smoke, women etc. But nowadays everything is so distracting, difficult to keep a straight bearing. Everyone

          • ~40 years ago people threw money on things like drink, smoke, women etc. But nowadays everything is so distracting, difficult to keep a straight bearing. Everyone and everywhere wants a piece of your wallet.

            "I spent half my money on gambling, alcohol and wild women. The other half I wasted." –W.C. Fields

      • It's an easy way to launder money. Cryptocurrency works better but there's lots of criminals who have been using Counter-Strike skins successfully so why change?

        This is basically an inconvenience to have all of money launderers, notably the Russian mafia and the Russian government. Although honestly it's basically the same thing now. Not that I was an American should be throwing stones in my glass house...

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          In other words, it's more about Valve trying to bring the "game" back. Money laundering be damned, they have to make sure the CS2 community is a healthy one with active players who are actually playing the game.

          If the stuff is used for money laundering, they want to get out of that and likely they don't want to have items with so much rarity that every sale has to be reported for being over $10,000.

          Anyhow, the market is irrational, and reacts irrationally. I'm sure in 90 days when the dust settles we'll fin

    • A quick search says it is real money and 48% of players are aged 18-24.
      I had not idea of this situation and this is blowing my mind.
    • It's a flex. Same reason people buy $1000 bottles of iffy vodka for their friends in a night club.

    • lmao (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      did you miss the whole NFT phenomenon? people were spending a lot more than that for something which didn't even pertain to their favorite video game.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Sloppy ( 14984 )

      Have you ever been to Las Vegas, NV?

  • I've played FPS games since the original Doom was the hot new thing, and I've never understood why anyone would pay real money for cosmetic player doodads.

    • I don't understand it, but then I don't understand NFTs, or crypto, or any of those fads that make people pay money for 0s and 1s sitting on someone else's computer. As for skins, I'm all for it if that means companies can make great F2P games with no pay-to-win element.

    • I've never understood why anyone would pay real money for cosmetic player doodads.

      Same here - but only don't understand why people would pay such an exorbitant amount of money for it; I think there's value in paying a small fee because someone took the time to crate it (time is money), but there's no real "scarcity" of the thing, it's all artificial, which is where these crazy figures come from.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by registrations_suck ( 1075251 )

        I don't understand why people spend a lot of money on tennis shoes or a great number of other things either.

        Similarly....most people probably don't understand why I have a $2000 pool stick.

        • I don't understand why people spend a lot of money on tennis shoes or a great number of other things either.

          Similarly....most people probably don't understand why I have a $2000 pool stick.

          I totally understand. I'd be less understanding of a $2K virtual pool cue avatar.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Sebby ( 238625 )

          Similarly....most people probably don't understand why I have a $2000 pool stick.

          I think there's a difference between something that's "cheap" and something that's worth the price for the quality.

          But branding is different. A $50 pool stick that is functionally equivalent in every way to that $2000 pool stick of yours, but the only difference being the silkscreen on yours, then you're obviously overpaying (or a tool, which ever you want to claim as your own).

          • Well, you don't know about pool sticks (;

            Up to around the $500 mark, you can gain real functionality or basic quality improvements.

            Over the $500 mark, you're paying mostly for design and materials, with only slight improvement in basic quality. Depending on what you're buying, more of that can be going into quality or features that affect playability.

            There is a fundamental difference between a .$50 stick and a $200, for example.

            As for silk screening....that's in the realm of cheap sticks. Expensive sticks h

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by godrik ( 1287354 )

      I understand why people would pay a little bit of money but not a lot of money
      If you play the game 10-20 hours every week. It can make sense to spend 5 bucks a month and get new skins. The game looks a bit more fresh this way
      Even $30 would not make sense to me.

      • For the people we are talking about, $20,000 IS a little bit of money. Welcome to the world of income disparity. A few people with too much money and not enough to spend it on driving up prices for everyone else.

        • I can't imagine there are really that many billionaire gamers out there. Perhaps Mohammed Bin Salman (known to be an avid gamer is a mega purchaser or something. Musk is known to just play people to game for him.

          In any event, $20k to a billionaire may be like $20 to me, but I certainly wouldn't pay $20 for some cheesy character skin. I might pay $20 for DLC or something that actually impacts game play.

  • People are/were paying $20,000 in actual U.S. dollars for some item in an online game?

    Am I reading that correctly?

  • $20,000 on a Doppler Ruby Butterfly Knife is a strong contender for gold in the olympics of stupid wastes of money

  • why I nominate the Darwin award to humanity.

  • There is no economy for standard **game playing**. No one's games or game playing are being affected.

    Instead, there is an unsupported, unsanctioned black market economy for the use of real money to buy cosmetic decorations in the game. And it's not like many people wants to pay these market-manipulated prices to USE the skins... it's a purely speculative market that's maybe 1% more rational than trading NFTs.

  • "Erased $$$ in market cap" just means "Value of thing was X, now value of thing is Y which is less than X"

    It's so damn misleading.

    • The closer to zero that market cap is, the more correct the valuation.

    • Oh fuck off. The headline is exactly correct. Something was worth X yesterday and today it's worth Y, where Y is substantially less than X.

      If you had to sell right now, you would get far less than for the product than if it you sold it yesterday. Hence, erased market cap.

      It's used every single day in the financial industry and is regularly quoted in headlines when a company's stock plunges.

      • The headline can be exactly correct. Doesn't mean our we've-always-done-it-that-way process of measurement isn't still exactly fucked.

        Finance industry makes up terms and concepts all the damn time as they invent new "markets" out of fucking thin air. Sometimes those are concepts that should never exist in Capitalism. Such as the concept of betting against success. Ain't fucking hard to corruptly manufacture failure in business to feed the "industry" of hedge funds. 80% of them fail and shit the bed or

  • CS used to be awesome in it's first incarnation. Cheaters and everything else ruined it. It was awesome when you could get on a server with your friends and have a fair round. If I have to play for in game items, I'm being played. Lootboxes are a serious joke. If you need to gamble, stick with pokemon cards.

  • I think I have successfully avoided putting real world money into the video game fashion show industry. And stories like this remind me I made the correct decision. I play a game for fun. I could care less if my character looks the same as someone who just started.

  • I always thought the CS trade community moved over the web3 and crypto years ago. Seems like a lot of the founders and thought leaders were ex-CS trading people who had gotten banned for one reason or another and wanted to create products that they could never be kicked out of again.

  • At least it was when I stopped playing a long time ago.

  • The last CS game I played was 1.5, the last to have the iconic HL1-era orange menus and the specific menu sounds. The most you could customize were the sprays. So imagine my shock when I found out it now features ...loot boxes and cosmetics? I will never understand people who would pay for such things.

  • Good. Nothing in CS is worth more than $5.

  • who knows people might have to get up off their asses and live life in the real world? oh my gosh that would be awful
  • CS went to shit when it went retail.

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