Valve gain from any worried trading in the short-term, with every Steam Marketplace sale bring a 5 percent “Steam Transaction Fee” on top of a 10 percent”Counter-Strike 2 cost … that is figured out and gathered by the video game publisher” (read: Valve). In the long term, however, making a few of the rarest products in the video game much easier to acquire will likely depress general costs amongst the whales that control the marketplace.

Wild CS2 upgrade tonight. I’ve invested the last couple of hours digging through market information and constructed this forecast chart to demonstrate how I believe things play out.

Knives and gloves drop quick (40– 50%) as the brand-new trade-up course floods supply, while Covert skins rise short-term as everybody … pic.twitter.com/8NOMIBPZ1F

— SAC (@SAC_IG) October 23, 2025

Utilizing market information, Irish Guys esports group owner SAC ran some forecasts approximating that, over the next couple of months, “the marketplace settles about 5– 10% lower in general, not a crash, simply a correction.” There are likewise more bullish and bearish possibilities, depending on how general product need and market liquidity establishes in the near future.

Market tracker CSFloat likewise crunched some numbers to figure out that the total supply of knives and gloves might approximately double if every typical product were traded up under the brand-new upgrade. In practice, however, the supply boost will likely be “far less.”

Huge financial shifts aside, this most current upgrade appears set to make it simpler for brand-new CS2 gamers to access some once-rare in-game products without breaking the bank. “I got burned a little [by the update]… however truthfully, this is the method to choose the long term health of the video game,” Redditor chbotong composed.”[It’s] provided me faith that Valve is in fact guiding in an instructions that prefers the typical gamer than a market whale.”