Valve made $1 billion from Counter-Strike cases in 2023: CS2 case opening stats

Valve netted at least $1 billion in sales in 2023 just off Counter-Strike cases throughout the last year. 

Skins are a massive part of Counter-Strike. CS:GO was a pioneer of in-game loot boxes and cosmetics, and with a marketplace where players can buy and sell skins, it essentially turned it into an economy of its own.

And over the years, players have spent millions on skins, possibly billions at this point, with some skins even being worth upwards of $1 million each, like a recent AK-47 Blue Gem unboxed just days ago. 

With its ever-increasing popularity, the thirst for rare skins isn’t slowing down. In fact, players opened more than $1 billion in Counter-Strike cases alone in 2023. 

According to CS2 Case Tracker, a website that tracks real-time data of CS cases being opened, they estimated that players spent a mind-boggling $980,000,000 USD on keys for cases in 2023. 

This doesn’t include the cost of cases themselves, which Valve also takes a 15% cut from in the community market, meaning they earned at least $1 billion total.

It means more than 400 million cases were unboxed in 2023. Not only that, according to their statistics, it also saw case prices increase by 178% over the year prior, with the Danger Zone Case increasing by 492% in price. 

Naturally, we can thank the ungodly amounts of hype Counter-Strike 2’s launch had over the year for the insane numbers, as CS:GO transitioned towards the new release. 

As charted by CS2 Case Tracker, they pointed out that in March 22, 2023, when CS2 was revealed, there was a significant increase in case unboxings which peaked later in April with 50.3 million unboxings in the month alone. 

And we can also thank CSGO’s very last skin collection, the Anubis Collection Package, which was released on April 25, as one of the main reason why case unboxings enjoyed such an all-time high. 

And later into the year, on September 27, 2023, when CS2 was finally fully released, case unboxings surged once again and reached a high in October.