CS2 item market loses nearly $2B in value overnight thanks to “trade up” update

Valve benefits from any panicked trading in the short term, with every Steam Marketplace sale carrying a 5 percent “Steam Transaction Fee” on top of a 10 percent “Counter-Strike 2 fee… that is determined and collected by the game publisher” (read: Valve). In the long term, though, making some of the rarest items in the game easier to obtain will likely depress overall spending among the whales that dominate the market.

Wild CS2 update tonight. I’ve spent the last few hours digging through market data and built this projection chart to show how I think things play out.

Knives and gloves drop fast (40–50%) as the new trade-up path floods supply, while Covert skins surge short-term as everyone… pic.twitter.com/8NOMIBPZ1F

— SAC (@SAC_IG) October 23, 2025

Using marketplace data, Irish Guys esports team owner SAC ran some projections estimating that, over the next few months, “the market settles about 5–10% lower overall, not a crash, just a correction.” But there are also more bullish and bearish possibilities, depending on how overall item demand and market liquidity develops in the near future.

Market tracker CSFloat also crunched some numbers to determine that the overall supply of knives and gloves could roughly double if every common item were traded up under the new update. In practice, though, the supply increase will likely be “far less.”

Massive monetary shifts aside, this latest update seems set to make it easier for new CS2 players to access some once-rare in-game items without breaking the bank. “I got burned a little [by the update]… but honestly, this is the way to go for the long term health of the game,” Redditor chbotong wrote. “[It’s] given me faith that Valve is actually steering in a direction that favors the average player than a market whale.”