CS Making a Killing for Valve Through Case Shop

Source: Valve Corporation.

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Counter-Strike 2 is a free-to-play game, but its massive popularity as an online shooter makes it a lucrative opportunity for its developers. According to the report, Valve was supposed to earn $980 million just from selling CS case keys.

This information comes from data collected by CSGOCaseTracker.com, which has been tracking the market for virtual items in Counter-Strike for years.

1. The website released a digital commerce summary for 2023, also stating that players opened more than 400 million cases and used 359.6 million keys.
2. The Dreams and Nightmares Case was the most popular, earning Valve $125.3 million and being opened over 50.5 million times.
3. It should be added that cases prices in 2023 increased by an average of 178%. Two series have become the most expensive over the past 12 months. The CS:GO Weapon Case ultimately cost 25 dollars more than at the end of 2022. However, the market price of the Danger Zone Case increased the most in percentage terms - by 492%, although it's still a relatively inexpensive series: a case is valued at around $0.76 (via Steam).

Cases full of treasures

The platform also provided some other data, showing the popularity of specific series and times when players were particularly active in opening cases. Most of them were opened on April 25 (6.6 million), as a result of the release of the Anubis Collection, as well as the official announcement of Counter-Strike 2 on March 22.

Valve saw a particularly profitable period from late March to mid-May, as well as in October following the September premiere of CS 2. The end of 2023 still fared better than its beginning, even after the frenzy of opening cases had subsided. In fact, it was the best CS result since August 2022 (via CSGOCaseTracker).

It should be noted that the report only covers Counter-Strike. It's true that Team Fortress 2 isn't as popular as CS (mostly because Valve has effectively abandoned further development of the game). Nevertheless, it's still one of the most frequently played titles on Steam.

This is also a paradise (or hell) for virtual traders. It's enough to say that over the past 24 hours, players have bought nearly 24,000 standard case keys and continue to purchase (or rather acquire through trading) items in TF2 for ridiculous prices (it's also worth mentioning DOTA 2, although most of the in-game items are non-tradable).

So it can be assumed that Valve is making over a billion dollars annually solely from case trading. It's no wonder that CS remains the apple of the developer's eye.