Shocking CS2 Update: VALVE Adds Trade Contracts for Knives and Gloves, Causing Panic in the Skins Market. Is Everything Really That Bad?
On the night of October 23, 2025, VALVE released one of the most discussed updates for Counter-Strike 2 (CS2), which radically changed the game’s economy. The update, titled “Re-Retakes,” brought back the popular Retakes mode, introduced technical improvements, and most importantly, expanded the Trade Up Contract system, allowing players to exchange five Covert (red) rarity items for knives or gloves. This change instantly shook the community, causing chaos in the skins market: prices for Covert skins skyrocketed, while knives and gloves plummeted.
The developers didn’t stop there and continued to take the community on a rollercoaster ride! Right after release, it turned out that the obtained Gold items became untradable, and the community calmed down a bit. But VALVE quickly released a fix, making them fully tradeable and sellable on the Steam marketplace (with the standard 7-day trade ban for new items). In this article, we’ll examine all aspects of the update, focusing on economic consequences, player reactions, expert predictions, and provide our own assessment of what’s happening.
Overview of Changes in the Update
Yes, this concerns us all to a lesser extent now, but let’s quickly run through the other update points.
- Return of Retakes Mode: Funny that if this had been the only update, the entire community would have praised the developers. The popular mode from CS:GO has returned to official rotation. Players can now practice post-plant situations in 3v4 format again, with weapon selection before the round directly from the game menu.
- Technical Improvements: VALVE optimized performance in the main menu and item inspection interface. Fixed bugs with inventory icon rendering (sometimes they displayed blurry or didn’t load). Also eliminated problems with server sound effects that could trigger multiple times.
- Map Changes: Updated Golden, Palacio, and Rooftop maps to the latest versions from Steam Workshop. On Inferno, improved visibility of “triple stack” positions on B and “under balcony” on A. Added performance optimizations.
These changes, while useful, pale in comparison to the main feature – the expansion of Trade Up Contract. The system now allows exchanging five Covert items for a knife or gloves from the same collection. Specifically:
- 5 StatTrak™ Covert items → 1 StatTrak™ knife
- 5 regular Covert items → 1 regular knife or gloves
Initially, the obtained knives and gloves appeared as account-bound and non-tradeable, which caused additional shock in the community. However, this turned out to be a bug: VALVE quickly released a patch confirming that items are fully tradeable and sellable, with the usual 7-day trade restriction to prevent immediate speculation. This fix came just hours after release but had already managed to influence the initial panic.
Market Situation: Crash and Panic
The main shock of the update was its impact on the skins economy. The CS2 market, valued at billions of dollars, has always been sensitive to VALVE’s changes, and this was no exception. Recently we were amazed that skins capitalization exceeded $6 billion, but now it has dropped back to $5 billion (which is still significantly more than in 2023/2024). So maybe everything isn’t that bad?
Within minutes of the announcement, prices for Covert items skyrocketed up to 10 times, as players rushed to buy the cheapest options for making contracts. For example, unpopular red skins that previously cost $5-10 jumped to $50-100+, causing a supply shortage.
On the other hand, knife and glove prices crashed by 20-50% in the first hours. The reason – reduced uniqueness: now players can obtain their versions through contracts without opening cases (previously, this was the only mechanism through which new knives or gloves appeared in the game). This led to panic selling, especially among investors who held knives as primary assets.
Currently, Covert prices have stabilized slightly but remain inflated, while knives continue to fall as players anticipate a huge wave of new items on the market a week after the trade ban is lifted.
Community Reactions: From Shock to Criticism
The community exploded on social media. Many express anger: “Valve, what are you smoking? This destroys the economy!” Traders complain about losses: “I invested $401k in this, now skins are worthless.” Some even joke about suicide, emphasizing the emotional intensity.
On the positive side, regular players are happy: “Finally knives will be accessible.” But critics note that this doesn’t make them “accessible” per se, though oversaturation will indeed noticeably lower prices initially. Despite the overall chaos, there are those calling for calm and not jumping to hasty conclusions.
DON'T PANIC! Main Takes and Predictions: What's Next for the Market?
“VALVE Crashed the Market”?
Many believe this is a deliberate mischief from VALVE, but we wouldn’t rush to conclusions. After introducing the Genesis terminal, we became finally convinced that developers want to move away from gambling associations. And we’re inclined to think that The Armory Pass, Genesis, and even the ability to trade knives – this is part of a gradual and smooth transition to a modified mechanism for introducing new skins. The main idea – VALVE wants to get rid of cases and is gradually preparing the ground so we don’t lose the ability to obtain old knives and the market doesn’t fly into space due to potential shortages.
“Knives Will Never Grow in Price Again”
Undoubtedly, knife and glove owners had it the hardest. But we urge you not to rush into sales, as this is only the first reaction, and secondly – consider this a lesson that “investments” need to be held in different items. With the rise in Covert prices – other qualities will also climb up, because all items will start disappearing from the marketplace much faster than new ones will be opened. Due to this, a shortage of Covert skins may be created in the coming months, and knives will start gaining momentum again.
“Traders and Collectors Are Disappointed in VALVE – Major Players Will Leave”
Honestly, we don’t rule out that VALVE warned really major players. Remember the anomalous price increase for Factory New skins that started literally a couple of weeks ago? And the quality of items in crafting affects the quality of the knife. So either “boosters” knew something, or they calculated some publicly available hints from the developers. Therefore, we wouldn’t fall for loud statements from “major players” about collapse and “undermined trust in VALVE.” It’s possible that “savvy” market participants are now dumping “casual” investors who came into the CS2 skins world on the hype wave about “the second bitcoin.” And with bitcoin, so much has happened, yet it keeps breaking “historical highs.”
“VALVE Won’t Stop Here”
In our opinion, if VALVE wanted to “kill” the market, they would rather add the ability to peel stickers off weapons. Then, one of the main and interesting investments in the game would truly collapse and we could seriously think about “closing up shop.”
However, this is completely unprofitable for VALVE. After all, it’s important for developers to create scarcity to encourage players to replenish it and spend money on opening capsules. This is exactly what they did with the ability to trade knives and gloves through trade contracts. Judge for yourself: to some extent, now one knife equals 10 Mil-Spec, 10 Restricted, 10 Classified, and 5 Covert skins! VALVE stirred up the market and in the first hours alone, the number of transactions on the Steam marketplace increased by 300%!
Remember that VALVE earns from commissions on every sale on the Steam marketplace. Therefore, VALVE may not stop, but they won’t kill anything. It’s just that today knife owners were unlucky, and let’s talk about this with certainty at least in a few months.
“VALVE Killed Third-Party Markets and Services”
It’s no secret that developers don’t like their money going away, as players sell skins not through their marketplace where they collect commissions, but on other sites. But without this tool (essentially withdrawing skins to real money) – the market will cease to be so in-demand and attractive, so no one will close them. And in general, how some managed to connect this update, which didn’t touch trading rules at all, with “killing” markets – is a big question.
Conclusion
The update certainly shook the community, but definitely didn’t kill anything. They didn’t shut down our ability to trade, but only extended the chain of “processing” skins to knives. For a huge number of knives to appear – no fewer other skins in the chain need to disappear. For example, items from collections where you can pull rare knife versions like “Ruby,” “Emerald,” “Sapphire” will rise significantly in price. Yes, there will be more knives, but due to the inevitable shortage of items from which they’re crafted – regular skins will rise in price, and this will by inertia cause a rise in knife and glove prices. Already now in some moments the market looks inadequate, where the cost of Covert can exceed the cost of a knife, which looks completely illogical. Stop the panic! Perhaps we took a step back to take two steps forward!
Author: Alex
Alex is an author and esports observer with more than seven years of experience. He specializes in analyzing new releases in the world of computer games, gaming services, and in-game economies. Alex shares practical experience and an expert perspective on the development of gaming, helping readers understand complex mechanics and stay up to date with the latest news.
