Highlight Charms from BLAST.tv Austin 2025. What Are They? What’s the Future of the New Item in CS2?
On the evening of July 2nd, all CS2 servers went down peacefully, so the update the next day came as no surprise to anyone. VALVE finally released the champions capsule, which contained nothing new. But the novelty with keychains, although announced earlier, truly managed to deliver a series of surprises. Of course, the update couldn’t go without a couple of bugs and dataminers who found a few unusual files in the game, but nothing interesting there. Let’s talk in more detail about the new item and predict its future fate in the Counter-Strike community.
Highlight Charms. What Was Surprising?
The developers announced this feature with the release of all merchandise from the Austin Major and immediately warned that keychains with highlights would only be available from the playoff stage. The mechanics seemed quite simple: a new type of keychain would be attached to souvenir weapons from containers, dedicated not just to a match, but to a specific moment and player. Initially, we predicted that these weapons would have slightly increased demand compared to other souvenir weapons. And we weren’t wrong, except for one thing: keychains can be removed, and there turned out to be 492 highlights!
Did you see that many highlights in 8 playoff matches? That’s right, you didn’t, but VALVE handled this task by adding moments where, for example, ZywOo dies after an unsuccessful smoke clear. Now the second question arises: was this part of the original plan or a ridiculous coincidence? So far, everything looks like this is an absolutely conscious and, it must be admitted, extremely well-thought-out move by VALVE. There really weren’t that many good highlights, and this way they increased the value of epic moments from the Major. Now players will hunt for that very moment with apEX’s middle finger from the grand final opening. This step will definitely increase user interest, which will accordingly boost souvenir package sales.
By the way, the author already appreciated this move from the developers: “Champion stickers are out, time to spend money. And you can also get my middle finger as a souvenir from the playoffs. You’re crazy, devs” – Dan “apEX” Madesclaire
But VALVE went further and allowed not only removing the keychain but also transferring it to another weapon and selling it on the marketplace. This is simply win/win for users and the company’s wallet. We get not just dead cheap mass-produced items, but truly memorable souvenirs that can be hung on any weapon, while developers get a new relevant product on the marketplace.
How Highly Will the New Item Be Valued?
It’s hard to predict yet, but the cost of regular keychains shouldn’t exceed the cost of regular mass-produced items by more than 2 times, while containers with keychains will cost significantly more than regular ones. Therefore, if you invested in containers from the group stage – urgently get rid of them.
Most likely, keychains will follow the path of stickers, where moments from ZywOo, donk, s1mple will stand out and be in greater demand. What’s most interesting is how many players, investors, and most importantly – collectors, will want to get truly cool highlights in their inventory? Because this is exactly what will determine their price, but we also need to consider the rarity and quantity of these “valuable” moments. Plus, visually (when applied to weapons) they don’t differ at all, which already puts more doubt on claims about new Katowice 2014. It’s possible that VALVE will fix this moment and in the future we’ll have “golden” tokens with the rarest drop chance.
As you can understand – there are really many variables, which means the range of possible outcomes is no less. We’re more inclined toward a scenario where mass-produced items remain mass-produced, moments from top players will be valued slightly higher, and true highlights (like apEX’s middle finger) will receive increased demand but won’t rise above conditional $100. If we stick to this logic, then getting any knife from a case will still bring more profit than chasing souvenir packages.
More information can be obtained in a week when trade bans are lifted and they start appearing on the marketplace. Certainly, these won’t be final prices, but selling initially at inflated prices seems like a traditionally reliable strategy.
However, remember that the next Major is literally in 5 months, which means there’s a chance that after discounts begin, Austin merchandise won’t stay in the game for 3-4 or even 5 months as it was before. Therefore, we would definitely consider buying several souvenir packages so we don’t kick ourselves later. After all, we shouldn’t forget that this is a test product that may be modified in the future, and the Austin token could become a rarity.
Some Statistics on Highlight Keychains
Let’s remind once again that this update is only relevant for playoff participants, so you won’t find any m0NESY or NiKo here. Here’s the top-10 list of players and the number of keychains with their moments:
- ZywOo — 30
- apEX — 29
- mezii — 24
- flameZ — 23
- ropz — 23
- spinx — 23
- 910 — 22
- mzinho — 21
- jimpphat — 20
- Senzu — 20
As you can see, the top features players from Vitality, The MongolZ, and MOUZ, as they reached the latest stages and played more maps. By the way, Inferno became the leader in the number of highlights, and the most moments were collected in the Vitality vs The MongolZ grand final – 90 pieces.
