Valve released an update that crashed the CS2 skins market

A feature was added in CS2 by Valve, allowing players to "craft" a knife or gloves from Covert-quality items. As a result, prices for cosmetic items—especially knives and gloves—plummeted.

Novyny.LIVE reports on what happened to the CS2 skin market.

How the Counter-Strike 2 skin market crashed

CS2 released an update enabling players to create skins for knives and gloves by exchanging Covert-quality items. Following this, in-game cosmetic items—particularly knives and gloves—dropped sharply in price. According to Pricempire statistics, within the first four hours after the update, the skin market lost $700 million in value.

Currently, prices for individual knives have fallen by 55–60%.

Just five days earlier, the skin market had reached a record high, valued at around $6 billion, according to Pricempire analysts.

Valve expanded the Trade Up Contract functionality: now, five Covert items can be exchanged for a knife or gloves (for StatTrak™ items, the exchange results in a StatTrak™ knife from the collection of one of the provided items). Additionally, the Retakes mode officially returned to the game, and several technical issues were fixed.

The exchange mechanic for knives and gloves drastically reduces the "scarcity" of top-tier items and can redistribute demand: Covert skins become more valuable as inputs for contracts, while premium items lose value.

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