Counter Strike 2 update wipes nearly $2 billion off skin market value by making fancy knives and gloves easier to get

Valve has taken a sledgehammer to the Counter Strike 2 skins market in a “small update”, which allows players to trade five regular Covert skins for a fairly rare cosmetic for your knives and gloves.

That might not sound like a big deal, in fact, it probably sounds like a nice way of allowing casual players to cycle out older skins they don’t like for something fancier. Here’s the rub: Counter Strike 2 skins are tradable on the Steam market, and knife / gloves skins have historically sold for some serious money.

To understand why, you need to know the primary method of earning skins. In Counter Strike 2, players open weapon cases for skins. These are for the most part loot boxes containing weapon skins, and the rarest golden prize you can get from these cases are knife and gloves skins. Different weapon cases can give different varieties of knives and gloves, for example the Prisma 2 case drops the Stiletto knife with a random camo on it.

So prior to the small update, if you wanted a really cool looking knife, you had to pay real money for these weapon cases and try your luck on getting a knife. Alternatively, you could buy a knife you wanted. For reference a knife I like – the Stiletto Slaughter – sold for roughly £671 on October 9.

However, Fast forward to today, and that same knife sold for as low as £222. That’s because of the update. You can now trade up five covert rarity skins for a knife, which has suddenly increased the supply of knives on the market, thus leading to a sudden drop in price across the board for knives.

As a result, on a macro level, the entire Counter Strike 2 skin market cap has dropped by 28.11 percent according to CS2 market analytics website Price Empire. In other words, that’s almost $2bn in less than a week. All because Valve made acquiring certain cosmetics in its popular game easier.

So, that’s a shocking figure, but is this a good thing? It certainly depends on what position you’re in. If you’re a normal player with a few cool skins, and have felt priced out of getting a knife skin due to the pricey market surrounding them, this is certainly a great update for you. It’s not so great if you’re someone who invested money into Counter Strike 2 cosmetics rather than, y’know, stocks, a savings account, etc. In fact, it’s potentially devastating for people who decided to invest a chunk of their wealth into Counter Strike skins over the years.

So pour one out to the Counter Strike 2 players who have found their inventories drop by like 30% plus, and if you’ve got an old Counter Strike account you’ve not opened up in a while, why not boot the game back up and see if you can get a fancy knife!