The prices of many weapon skins and loot boxes for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive went wild shortly following the reveal of Counter-Strike 2. Valve confirmed that Counter-Strike 2 is real and coming later this year on March 22, which prompted an unprecedented popularity spike for the last mainline installment in the long-running franchise.
More specifically, CS:GO broke its simultaneous Steam player record within days of the sequel's announcement and nearly a decade into its release. While such a massive influx of new and returning players was always going to affect the in-game economy, recent Steam Community Market activity reveals some truly wild figures emerging from this trend.
After Valve confirmed that CS:GO skins will carry over to Counter-Strike 2, the prices of everything from weapon skins and stickers have gone up across the board. Many loot boxes like Weapon Case 3 hence doubled in value overnight, according to hundreds of sales that now value them at some $5.50. Moreover, dozens of individual skins such as Five-SeveN Contractor, Tec-9 Tornado, all variants of P90 Scorched that previously sold for just a few cents a piece currently hover around the $1 mark. One particular commodity that saw an incredible spike in value since March 22 while still maintaining hundreds of daily sales is the Sticker Capsule 2, a loot box debuted in 2014 which has multiple variants that are currently valued at over $25, whereas they were averaging a couple of cents per sale a year ago.
The fact that plenty more players installed the game in recent days, thus upping the demand for a finite supply of some older items, is just one factor affecting these wild price spikes. Another thing to consider is that some previous leaks have already revealed that a significant portion of unimpressive cosmetics from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive look much better in Source 2, the engine powering Counter-Strike 2.
A somewhat reliable rule of thumb for figuring out whether an item was already popular prior to the new game's reveal is to check if its Community Marketplace price increased by a factor larger than two since March 22. A smaller increase indicates it was already a hot commodity and hence appreciated in value primarily due to a larger number of players, which is what seems to have happened with the e.g. Anodized Gunmetal variant of the Five-SeveN pistol. Any larger spike tends to suggest that the observed price change is primarily driven by a given item's Counter-Strike 2 rendition.
Weapon skin prices aren't the only indicator of the ongoing Counter-Strike craze prompted by Valve's reveal of CS2. Apart from the aforementioned record number of concurrent players, the developers are already warning fans to watch out for Counter-Strike 2 beta test scams.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive is free to play on PC.