On Oct. 22, 2025, Valve Corporation released an update to
Counter-Strike 2 that would forever change the dealings of a
six-billion-dollar free market. So what is this market? Is it
stocks? Is it Valve’s online video game store, Steam? It turns
out it’s neither – it’s Counter-Strike skins.
In its over 11 year history, the “Counter-Strike 2” skin market
reached a monumental market cap of $6 billion. Yet, after a
seemingly innocent update, the total market value was cut in half
to just 3 billion dollars in the course of 24 hours.