Valve Scored A Staggering $1 Billion From Counter-Strike Loot Boxes Last Year

Valve and its first-person shooter title Counter-Strike had a big year last year, with the launch of Counter-Strike 2 and the sunset of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. However, that might not be the biggest Counter-Strike news of the year as we have now gotten a peak behind the curtain to learn that Valve has drawn in at least $1 billion in sales off cases to get weapon skins, stickers, patches, and other cosmetics in the game.

On August 14th, 2013, Valve introduced the Arms Deal update, which brought skins to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Alongside the customization of weapons, it also brought weapon cases that players could open, with the appropriate key purchased from Valve, to get one of over 100 skins for the weapons in-game. Since then, the market for Counter-Strike weapon skins has exploded, spawning its own economy with sub-markets and a plethora of other weapon skin cases that have been released in the subsequent 11 years.


Indicative of this explosive growth and economy is the year-in-review from CSGO Case Tracker and CSfloat. Data reports that 400,318,821 cases were unboxed in 2023, which equates to 359.6 million in keys used and a staggering $980 million spent. The growth is also marked by the prices of cases increasing on the Steam Community Market by 178%. Out of this growth, the Dreams & Nightmares Case had the strongest numbers, with nearly 50,511,222 cases opened, accounting for $126.3 million in key sales.

You can review the full statistics report on Counter-Strike cases, and honestly, the stats are quite impressive. For example, did you know that Wednesday was the most popular day of the week for opening CS2 cases in 2023? Regardless, it would seem a lot of people have gone for the gamble and tried to win big. After all, Skins=Wins.