CS2 players have branded the game ‘disappointing’ following skin price drop

Counter-Strike has become known as the haven for lovers of cosmetic items and weapon skins. Of course, when any significant shift happens within that haven, things can get messy and fast. With the release of CS2, that’s precisely what happened, with skins dropping in price by double digits.

On Sept. 28, a Twitter user spotted a major price decline on PriceEmpire, a CS2 skin trading website. It showed some skins decreasing incrementally and others falling quite sharply.

“The Price Drop Begins: Disappointing Update, no more Hype, and there will probably be far lower Player Numbers than expected,” they said, indicating that CS2‘s release may not have lived up to the pre-release hype it generated. Other websites also confirm this negative trend in skin prices, with many expensive skins getting knocked down significantly.

CSGODB, another website tracking trends within Valve’s iconic shooter, shows that some skins have declined by over 70 percent in the last 24 hours. One skin, Gut Knife Blue Steel, lost 72 percent of its value over the last day. Knife skins are among the most coveted and expensive skins in CS2, but it seems some of them have had a period of bloated pricing before the update.

Another knife, this time a Bayonet Scorched, dropped 60 percent. Bayonet knives, in general, are highly coveted skins, especially compared to Gut Knives, but they still declined significantly in just one day. It appears there will be a period of price redistribution and stabilization for a while. According to Steam charts, CS2 hasn’t brought in too many new players, with the game sitting at 1.3 million concurrent players—over 500 thousand players away from CS:GO’s all-time high.

Whether or not this is due to fans’ disappointment with how the Source 2 update turned out is unclear. The release significantly impacted the game’s economy, but that was somewhat expected considering the hype over the past summer.