Too rich for our skins: Valve's Counter-Strike 2 annoucement causes inflation in Steam market
CS:GO cases have seen huge price jumps since the announcement of Counter-Strike 2, with the Chroma and Chroma 2 cases nearly doubling in price.
American gaming shark Valve Corp. has announced that Counter-Strike 2, set to launch this summer, will allow CS:GO players to port over their Steam inventory skins and add visual updates to enhance their colors and textures. This has caused a wave of inflation in the skin market on the Steam marketplace, with markups ranging from 50 to 75 percent.
The Factory New Bayonet Marble Fade, which sold for around $850 in late March, is now priced at nearly $1500 in late April, a 76 percent price increase. The MP9 Hot Rod has also seen a notable price hike, with a Factory New Glock-18 Twilight Galaxy, which was criticized by the community for its lack of pop, has grabbed arguably the best visual update and has been a record-holding 420 percent markup, with the cheapest one on the market sitting at $315.
CS:GO cases have also seen huge price jumps since the announcement of Counter-Strike 2, with the Chroma and Chroma 2 cases nearly doubling in price from $1.75 to $3.50, and the notorious Huntsman case jumping from $7.65 to nearly $11 in a month’s time. This CS2 hype has led some players to not want to pay inflated prices for skins and try their luck at grabbing them out of the case instead. Players looking to make quick money have begun opening extra cases in hope of grabbing rare items to cash in on with the massive inflation across the market.
Former Cloud9 player and popular Twitch streamer Tarik Celik has opened a rare Butterfly Skin, worth $5k, in Counter-Strike:Global Offensive after churning about 20 or more crates. “Holy f*ck, holy f*ck! That’s the best knife I’ve opened….Gonna get a noise complaint for sure,” Tarik said after the drop.
March was so popular for cases that players set the individual record for cases opened in a month at around 39.5 million cases.
Currently, Counter-Strike 2 holds a soft launch date of summer 2023, and more players are gaining access to the closed beta. Valve is actively working to tweak the game and prep it for launch in the coming months. With about a month of hype over with, it seems like skin prices are only going to continue to rise, potentially until the game’s release.
