Counter-Strike has long been known for two things: fierce tactical FPS gameplay and a booming player market estimated to be worth literally billions of dollars. Now, thanks to Valve’s recent update, the latter is in a downward spiral, losing 25% of its value, or $1.75 billion, overnight.
First, some context. Counter-Strike is a free multiplayer shooting game. As with most other F2P games, it generates revenue from cosmetic sales. They arrive in loot box-style boxes that are opened with keys purchased with real currency. They can also be obtained by trading with and purchasing from other players Steam Community Marketplace. In addition to Steam, unofficial third-party CS cosmetics marketplaces have also emerged as channels for purchasing and selling items.
Since items are obtained randomly by opening chests, rarer items have the highest value in open markets. Lower rarity items can also be traded wholesale for higher rarity items through trade contracts. Previously, knives and gloves could not be obtained through trade contracts, which exponentially increased their value as highly sought after items. Before the latest update, some knives such as Doppler Ruby butterfly knifeit can cost around $20,000 on third-party sites like CSFloat.
Next Valve’s October 22 update to Counter-Strikethe second highest tier, Covert (red), can now be exchanged for Knives and Gloves. This essentially means that the previously extremely sporadic and highly sought after cosmetic will become much easier to obtain for those who increasingly desire it, reducing the value of Knives and Gloves on the open market.
This is where the market goes into a pointed decline. And that butterfly knife mentioned above? It’s trading around $12,000 as people are basically abandoning their shares, and at the time of writing, 15 have been sold in the last 16 hours.
Bloomberg informed about the market Counter-Strike Overnight from Wednesday evening to Thursday morning, beauty prices dropped by 25%. He said it lost about $1.84 billion in value Price empirewhich tracks and analyzes the CS market. “This completely changes the supply of the most sought-after and most expensive tier of items in Counter-Strike,” Pricempire marketing manager Ethan MacDonald told Bloomberg.
As sellers try to recoup their investments, sales similar to the one taking place at CSFloat are taking place in other locations. One such website Skin porteven put us in the waiting room to access it; the traffic was overwhelming for the servers.
Just as the values of NFTs or cryptocurrencies can change drastically, Counter-Strike Item traders are seeing their stocks plummet in value, and not for the best. While some lower rarity items have increased in value, and Reds may see a boost now that they can be traded for Knives and Gloves, this cannot make up for the sudden decline at the top of the cosmetics market.
We will have to wait and see if the market levels out or continues to decline. Many CS players and traders are eagerly waiting for more news: as of this writing Pricempire servers have crashed.
