Valve has taken a sledgehammer to the Counter Strike 2 skins market in a “small update”, which allows players to trade five regular Covert skins for a fairly rare cosmetic for your knives and gloves.
That might not sound like a big deal, in fact, it probably sounds like a nice way of allowing casual players to cycle out older skins they don’t like for something fancier. Here’s the rub: Counter Strike 2 skins are tradable on the Steam market, and knife / gloves skins have historically sold for some serious money.
To understand why, you need to know the primary method of earning skins. In Counter Strike 2, players open weapon cases for skins. These are for the most part loot boxes containing weapon skins, and the rarest golden prize you can get from these cases are knife and gloves skins. Different weapon cases can give different varieties of knives and gloves, for example the Prisma 2 case drops the Stiletto knife with a random camo on it.
So prior to the small update, if you wanted a cool looking knife, you had to pay real money for these weapon cases and try your luck on getting a knife. Alternatively, you could buy a knife you wanted. For reference a knife I like – the Stiletto Slaughter – sold for roughly £671 on October 9.