The hype for Counter-Strike 2 brought out a wave of players, both new and old, and Valve made a fortune on it in CS:GO.
As players return to the game in anticipation of the new iteration of the popular first-person shooter, more money was spent on cases than ever before.
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CS:GO is an even greater cash cow for Valve thanks to hype
According to the data, a total of 39.5 million cases were opened in CS:GO in March 2023. This information ranges from March 1 through April 1, totaling 31 days.
The key needed to open a case costs around US$2.50 on the market. Doing the math, 39.5 million keys multiplied by 2.50 will result in the ridiculous sum of US$98,750,000.
Now there are other factors, such as the cut that goes to the skin designers, but regardless, that’s an absurd amount of cash flowing in from the hype alone.
The new game brings updated graphics, which sees a ramped-up interest in skins. People are now opening cases in the hopes of grabbing some skins to either use or profit from when the game drops, or even before thanks to the hype.
The game is still in limited access, with a very small group of players compared to the number of overall players interested. This means many of those players opening cases aren’t even viewing them with the updated graphics.
The 39.5 million cases opened is roughly 12 million more than the previous month, and just about doubled December’s numbers according to CS:GO Case Tracker.
Whether or not we’ll see this continue in the build-up is unknown, but for now, it looks like the hype around CS2’s launch is well worth it for Valve.
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