The skin market in Counter-Strike 2 continues to be a cash cow for Valve, with the number of players spiking in recent days.
According to statistics from March 2025, there have been at least 32 million skins opened by players in the game CS2 worldwide. This has directly translated into significant profits for Valve.
Each day, players must purchase a key for $2.49 to open skins, and all proceeds from these transactions go directly into Valve’s pocket.
In addition, many skins are purchased on the Steam marketplace, where Valve earns a 15% transaction fee from each sale between users. Just from key sales alone, the 32 million skins correspond to over 82 million USD in revenue. When factoring in the additional fees from marketplace transactions involving skins, knives, or other unique items—which also incur a 15% fee on every sale—the actual revenue could exceed 100 million USD (over 2,600 trillion VND) in just one month.
According to statistics, among the skins opened, the “Revolution” skin was the most popular, with over 4.7 million instances opened in March. This figure does not include other transactions related to skins, knives, or specific unique items—where Valve continues to charge a 15% fee on every sale. The actual number of skins opened has not been disclosed by Valve, but statistics from third-party sites like CS:GO Case Tracker suggest that the real figures may still be modest compared to the reality.
The tracker calculates based on the number of new skins that appear in the database—these only appear when a player opens a case. Therefore, skins opened in personal inventories that don’t share their skins publicly won’t be counted, meaning the actual numbers could be significantly higher. In total, considering from the time CS:GO began until now, there have been over 2.065 trillion skins opened, according to data from CS:GO Case Tracker. And with Valve benefiting solely from this one game, it seems they are not in a rush to develop Half-Life 3, the project that many gamers have been eagerly awaiting.
