Counter-Strike player breathes new life into the game’s stale trade-up system

For years CS:GO’s skin trade-up system, an ingenious solution for extracting value out of excess skins, has been left untouched, but one forward-thinking player has presented a solution that refreshes the feature ahead of CS2’s launch later in 2023.

The trade-up contract, introduced in 2013 and formerly known as the Arms Deal Contract, is relatively simple: submit 10 skins of the same rarity, and the game will convert them into a single skin of a higher rarity from one of those 10 skin collections at random. The contract was most popular throughout the mid-2010s, with players gathering skins from the Cobblestone collection and trading them up for the elusive AWP Dragon Lore.

But the trade-up contract lost a lot of its charm with June 2018’s Panorama update. Many UI elements were removed, with players no longer able to hand-sign a “contract” before their 10 skins dissolved—just a simple checkbox confirming they were happy to proceed.

Fear not: user KYSO has a solution to spice up the trade contract. Calling the current system “underwhelming”, KYSO completely reworked the game’s UI for his concept, presenting the trade-up contract in a similar way to a regular case.

With KYSO’s system, once the 10 CS:GO skins are placed in the contract, players would be able to see the expected outcomes of the contract, a feature the current trade-up contract lacks entirely. Previously, players would need to manually search each collection to find out what skins would be attainable.

Of course, KYSO added the main feature of the old system—the ability to sign the contract yourself—before the addicting case-like wheel spun, revealing your random prize.

The concept received praise from the community, who went on to suggest similar trade-up contracts for non-weapons skins, such as stickers or graffiti drops that otherwise go straight onto the Steam Market for next to nothing.

KYSO’s brilliant concept is one of a smattering of ideas the Counter-Strike community is openly pitching to Valve ahead of CS2’s arrival this summer.