Valve made $1 billion in revenue off Counter-Strike cases in 2023 alone. With gamers looking to get skins for the best Counter-Strike guns, the long-lauded virtual loot boxes resulted in huge cash for the game’s developer.
With the Counter-Strike crates and skins economy being huge for the Steam marketplace, it’s no surprise that the weapon skins were a huge money maker for Valve.
Via CS2 Case Tracker, a website that monitors loot boxes in the popular online shooter, it was determined that $980,000,000 USD was spent on keys to open cases over the course of 2023. Alongside this, users can purchase cases from the Steam marketplace from other players, which Valve receives a cut of.
CS2 Case Tracker reports that cases rose in popularity around the reveal of the Counter-Strike 2 release date last year. During April of that year, 50.3 million cases were opened, more cases than any month previously recorded.
All in all, over 400 million cases were opened in Counter-Strike games. This is despite the price of cases increasing by 178% over 2023. Additionally, the release of CS2’s Anubis Collection Package skins resulted in a huge surge in popularity, alongside increased prices for Danger Zone cases.
Counter-Strike 2 has been a hugely successful launch for Valve, especially for a studio that rarely releases games. Alongside Team Fortress 2 and DOTA, the free-to-play cosmetics market is a hugely lucrative part of Valve’s business.
While players have been angry at the lack of left-handed options and the end of support for Mac and 32-bit PCs, everything else has been well received.
Valve‘s Counter-Strike 2 is only available on PC via the Steam store. While the game is currently a free-to-play title, players can purchase Prime Status upgrades to receive Prime-exclusive souvenir items, item drops, and weapon cases.