Counter-Strike 2’s October 23 update has sent shockwaves through the skin trading community, with the game’s total market cap dropping from a peak of around $6 billion to under $5 billion in the aftermath of a major change to how players can obtain knives and gloves.
The update expanded the Trade Up Contract system, letting users exchange five Covert-quality items for a knife or gloves, a process that was previously impossible. Players can now trade five StatTrak Covert items for a StatTrak knife, or five regular Covert items for a standard knife or gloves from one of the provided collections.
Until now, knives and gloves could only be acquired as rare drops from cases or through the Steam Community Market and third-party sites, where many traded for thousands of dollars. The new system means that even lower-value Covert skins can now be converted into these high-end cosmetics, flooding the market with new supply and driving prices down.
Many players and traders reacted with anger at the update. One CS streamer said, “You guys know that people are probably going to harm themselves cause of this, yet you pushed it out without hesitation, crazy.”
Former YouTube executive Fwiz also criticized Valve’s timing and its effect on the economy, writing, “Counter-Strike rugged its entire community. They put out a pretty savage update that lets you bundle items to trade up, and now people are using ~$5 worth of items to draw what once was $1000+ knives. They just rinsed everyone in the market who had anything of any value.”
Still, not everyone believes the impact will be as severe as some claim. Marketplace CSFloat shared data showing that, even if every eligible Covert skin was traded up, the total number of knives and gloves would only double.
“There are ~20 million coverts (excluding knives and gloves). Even if you traded up every single lower-tier skin to a covert, it only adds ~9M more,” the site explained. “In the worst-case scenario, if all ~29M of those coverts were traded up, it would roughly double the supply of knives & gloves from ~5.5M to ~11M. However, that would require every single skin to be traded to a knife/glove. It is more likely that the total supply increases far less.”
Streamer fl0m took a different view, saying the update was long overdue. “The market manipulation that was happening and driving prices to the point where people couldn’t buy them without ‘investing’ an insane amount of money to get a ‘nice’ skin was out of hand,” he said. “A normal human shouldn’t have to spend the amount of money to just have 1 nice skin in CS.”
Top skin trader and streamer zipeL added, “I am very invested in skins, obviously it is not looking great but nonetheless I feel pretty calm- will sit back and see how things unfold.
“However, I know many people will/are not coping well – please look out for each other – things will be alright.”
At the time of writing, the market cap has dropped as low as $4.2 billion.
The update has triggered one of the most significant economic shifts in Counter-Strike history, with millions in virtual item value wiped out overnight. Whether the market stabilizes or continues to fall will depend on how many players take advantage of the new trade-up system in the coming weeks.
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