How Valve is trying to re-shape the Counter-Strike skin ecosystem

Counter-Strike 2 newest update has shaken the skin market to its core, with virtual items prices both skyrocketing and plummeting in value. But could this be a strategy by Valve to re-shape the skin ecosystem and bring trading and purchasing of CS2Skins back to Steam?

What is Counter-Strike

Counter-strike 2, successor to its previous version, Counter-Strike Global Offensive, is a free-to-play First-Person Shooter computer game released in 2023, developed and published by Valve Corporation on the Platform Steam. Counter-Strike (CS) has become notorious over the past 10 years due to its monetization system, where players are able to pay real money to acquire in-game cosmetic skins through its loot box system.

The skin ecosystem of Counter-Strike 2

In the case of CS, cosmetic skins can be traded or sold to other players, on Steam or on third-party websites. With items being able to be sold or traded to others, Counter-strike skins started to acquire real world value depending on the rarity or pattern found on these items. This has incentivized players to purchase a large amount of loot boxes to try to acquire highly valued skins or engage in online gambling to try to obtain more of them. In a way, the popularity of Counter-Strike skins has out shined the popularity of the game, as it has become a form of online currency (like crypto currency), that acts as a form of investment to those that own these online items. Over the years, CS skins have become increasingly popular and valuable, especially among collectors, with some of the rarer skins reaching an estimated value of thousands or even millions of dollars. However, with new changes to the skin system implemented recently, the above is bound to change.

Image of a knife skin in the game Counter-strike 2 – Image by the Author

What has changed recently

On October 23^rd  2025, Valve released a new patch to Counter-Strike 2 that introduced a new way for players to acquire in-game skins. Prior to this update, players could only get these items through trading, purchasing from the community market or by opening loot boxes. Now, they can exchange 5 skins of the same rarity for a new one of the same rarity. To give an example, if players have 5 skins of the quality ‘Covert’, they can then exchange for a new skin of the same quality (randomly selected from the pool of Covert skins). This means that players can ‘fish’ for valuable items of each quality category, by exchanging cheap items for a chance to obtain a more expensive one. This has caused high-end items such as knives or gloves cosmetics to drop in price as these skins are the rarest and most difficult to acquire. In contrast, lower-end items that can be used to trade for a chance of acquiring the items described above have become increasingly expensive due to better odds of acquiring them. As such, this has caused major repercussions to the skin market. The bad part of this change is that is still very much like gambling to opening loot boxes, trying to get an expensive item like a rare skin, a knife or a set of gloves. It is just gambling in a different format with potentially better odds to hit the jackpot, nevertheless, still gambling.

Repercussions of the new patch

This has caused a large amount of money to be ‘wiped’ out of the online market of skins, estimated to be upwards of 2 billion dollars. This means that skins that were previously rated very highly by players or websites that curated Counter-Strike 2 items are now of lower value due to being easier to acquire. During some light investigation on the changes done to the game, I noted that the initial reaction from online communities on the platform Reddit (/r/csgo, /r/globaloffensive & /r/cs2) has been mixed, expressing both praise and criticism towards the changes. Many posters on these platforms compare the price of skins to cheap items like broken phones or peanuts, some users even comment that this does not affect them at all as they never owned expensive skins in the first place. At the same time, many lament the loss of value that their inventory has potentially suffered due to these changes. Cosmetics are a big part of the Counter-Strike culture and in my opinion, these changes are good for the overall health of the game and its skin ecosystem. It will allow players to acquire skins they weren’t able to purchase before due to high prices.

Image by user lkfnsv on R/GlobalOffensive – October 23rd, 2025

A commercial move by Valve?

While the primary way to acquire these skins is through the Steam platform, players can buy or acquire them through third-party websites. These websites act as trading or gambling hubs as they operate outside of Steam’s jurisdiction, where skin owners can act freely without having to worry about getting taxed or policed by Steam rules. As such, much of these transactions have been happening outside of Steam, especially when the cosmetics items get sold for large amounts of money, they are sold outside of Steam, so Valve doesn’t get a cut they would normally would if that item was sold on their platform. I argue that their newest patch is an attempt to bring players back to Steam as a transaction platform. Two of the primary ways of acquiring skins is through loot boxes within Counter-Strike or the Steam marketplace, where players can select what skins they want to purchase. Third-party websites are usually used to either gamble or to trade large quantities of skins or high value skins, whereas the Steam marketplace is usually used for the lower end of transactions done. By bringing players back to Steam, Valve will potentially increase the return they get from skins purchases, either through loot boxes purchases or through direct purchases via the marketplace. This commercial move by Valve will allow them to have a better control of the skin ecosystem, re-shaping the previous practices that were ingrained in the Counter-Strike community.

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