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- Valve introduced weapon skins, cases, and keys in 2012, which paved the way for its exponential success.
- The idea of trading and selling skins was lucrative and gave rise to the Steam Community Market.
- The rarity of the skins led users to purchase more, which increased Valve’s business and gave rise to gambling markets.
We all know the features and gameplay of Counter-Strike. But, do you know how Valve has opened a multi-billion dollar market just from a single game?
History Of CS:GO’s Market
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive came into being by Valve Corporation on August 21, 2012. The game was initially not free and that was the only way Valve earned from it. However, Valve wanted to convert this one-time purchase into something more lucrative.
This model was followed for a year until, Value decided to drop an “Arms Deal” update on August 13, 2013, which introduced weapon skins, cases, and keys. This created the iconic weapon skins system and the ever-growing Steam market for this game.
Rare Patterns
Not only were weapon skins rare due to special cases and events, but the weapon’s patterns (or finish) also significantly impacted its sales price. With the Arms Deal update, CSGO also launched a randomized skin pattern where each weapon had a distinct design.
This meant that people who stumbled across a skin, particularly a knife with unique patterns were flowing in profits since this specific skin equated to not only a few thousand dollars but the value could ramp up to hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The infamous blue gem is one of the examples of an incredibly rare skin pattern that the “Case Hardened” skins possess. In this pattern, an entire side of the weapon is covered with a shiny blue surface. A knife or an AK-47 with this pattern sells for $800K to $1.5M.
Stickers, Gloves & Others
On February 5, 2014, Valve introduced stickers along with the “Katowice 2014” which was in correspondence to the EMS One Katowice 2014 tournament that was taking place at that time.
Since these were the first-ever stickers, they are of so much value today that now their starting price is $400 and goes up to $110,000. Similarly, over the years, Value introduced gloves, agents, music kits, Graffiti, and Pins that were also tradable and sellable.
Steam Market
The weapon cases gave players an opportunity to obtain expensive skins on the basis of their luck. After the players had the skins, the Steam Community Market allowed users to trade or sell their skins.
Skins were categorized by rarity, with some being extremely rare and hence highly priced. These rare items were often found in limited-time events or special cases and stumbling upon these items meant that you could bag thousands of dollars by selling a single skin.
Skin-Betting & Gambling
This urge to obtain the rarest weapon skins encouraged people to open more cases in the hope of getting lucky. However, the twist was that the cases required a key worth a few dollars that they needed to purchase. This meant that Valve was raking in high profits.
Due to the popularity of the skins, skin betting began to rise in Mid-2014. Here, players wagered their skins on the outcomes of professional CS players, and all the skins from users were placed in a virtual pot and the winner gets to take all the skins.
This also led to other gambling sites, which came in the form of Roulette, Jackpot, Coin Flip, and other games. Here, the concept was to bet the skins and a random winner would be selected who would take all the skins.
Scams
These sites began doing extremely well and it got to a point where YouTubers and streamers started to indulge in scams. These guys would record themselves getting rare skins from gambling websites that they were promoting.
As innocent as it seemed, it turned out that these promoted websites were their own inventions where they rigged all the items in their favor, which hooked the audience and encouraged users to buy from their sites.
This site raked so much money that in July 2016, Valve had to issue cease and desist letters to over 20 gambling sites, to shut down the prevalence of this scam.
CS2
We see that Valve is the ultimate raker of profit. With the transition from CSGO to CS2, Valve had improved the outlook of the game enhancing the visuals and the details on the skins. This also equates to a rise in Valve’s ever-growing profit.
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[News Editor]
Obaid is pursuing a Law degree while working as a content writer. He has worked as a gaming writer for over three years because of his passion for the medium and reporting the latest updates in the industry. Having played hundreds of games, Obaid finds himself coming back to Elden Ring, Cyberpunk 2077, and Red Dead Redemption 2, with these games being among his favorites. He has also been mentioned on highly regarded websites, such as Wccftech, Metro UK, PS Lifestyle, GamePressure, VGC, and Gamespot.
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