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Skins are an integral part of Counter-Strike Global Offensive (CS: GO) and were the first game to introduce such in-game cosmetics to make the weapon finishes look more immersive. Although thousands of skins are available to grab after being released for almost a decade, the ways to acquire them are to get lucky and get them as a drop or to unbox a case and receive them.
While CS:GO items always follow the demand and supply pattern in the Steam Community Market to settle the prices, cases have always been costing a fortune since their initial release and may be sold for up to an average of 30$ during their initial sales and then drops down to as low as a few cents.
Users may have noticed that recent cases have had a surge in price, and the cheapest issue currently on the market is available for more than half a dollar, which never happened to date until the crate was discontinued. This article will investigate why CS:GO cases are currently so expensive and eventually increase regularly.
CS:GO cases will not be dropping in price anytime soon
People seem to conclude the sole reason behind the CS: GO case prices rising is completely due to the hype after the announcement of Counter-Strike 2 last month and its beta access to a limited number of people. While it may be a part of the chapter, this is not exactly the complete story.
Counter-Strike 2 may have brought a specific overhaul of lighting and effects to a few skins, but it does not justify the fact as the prices of those skin-obtainable cases would be affected.
A Reddit user, u/fjedjik, who has been keeping tabs on the case opening for a few months now, has calculated that players opened 30.2 million cases in February, which rose to 39.5 million in March.
On average, little over 20 million cases were being opened every month till January 2023; a sudden increase in openings seems to be the exact reason for shortages in the market.
Although the in-game drop system is completely random for CS: GO, it was analyzed that the game drops approximately one unexpected case and graffiti every week, which may be higher in number for a few weeks. However, not every player plays matches each week and lists the case in the community market, reducing the quantity available.
When will the prices become stable?
There is currently no apparent indication of the time it will take for cases to drop down in price at this time, but according to a famous CS: GO content creator, Anomaly's suggestion, Valve may take specific steps such as increasing the number of in-game case drops or may release more cases as a part of Operation Drop, which can be bought using stars like the previous ones.
While it is also worth noting that most of the time, Valve has not stepped in towards the trends of the CS:GO items on the Steam Community market. If it becomes a similar case, the prices will keep increasing until players reduce the number of case openings.
