StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 Items and New Feature – Sticker Slab! Hype or Another Threat to the Skins Market?
Today, November 13, 2025, VALVE released a major update for Counter-Strike 2 (approximately 4 GB), preparing the game for StarLadder Budapest Major 2025 and gifting the community several interesting innovations. This time, the developers added the revolutionary Sticker Slab, which could once again impact the CS2 market! We were also introduced to the Major sticker designs, Pick’Em was added, Viewer Pass, and some gameplay changes. Let’s break down each feature and give VALVE a “pencil” grade for each one, because first impressions are always deceiving.
StarLadder Budapest Major
The star of the update was the traditional in-game section where you can:
- Purchase tournament items: stickers, capsules, player autographs
- Participate in Pick’Em Challenge: predict match winners, earn points that update your medal and add tokens for opening souvenir packages
- To receive rewards in Pick’Em Challenge, you need to purchase a Viewer Pass from $10 to $18 (depending on region and content)
The Major starts on November 24, so this time VALVE did everything in advance, which is becoming a pleasant trend! Remember those updates less than 24 hours before the tournament started? Or how at PGL Major Stockholm 2021, autographs only appeared during the playoffs stage? Now that doesn’t happen anymore. You can calmly think about your picks and decide whether to buy the Viewer Pass and even farm up your balance. For this, the developers definitely deserve praise (and it doesn’t matter that this should be standard practice).
New Budapest Major Stickers: Designs, Types, and Capsules
Like the previous Major, we got 3 capsules with team logos, the contents of which correspond to participants of each stage. However, the design has changed significantly, and now we can even more confidently assume that the “glowing” paper stickers will be limited edition, as they were dedicated to the Texas theme of BLAST Austin Major. We predicted this and advised stocking up on these stickers, which isn’t too late to do even now. Adding a night map to the official map pool could really boost this item.
Budapest Major also had its innovations – this time we didn’t see either Glitter or Foil versions – instead, they added Embroidered! They look like real patches on uniforms: textured, dense, with floral motifs (inspired by Hungarian embroidery).
Sticker types:
- Paper (regular)
- Holo (holographic)
- Gold
- Embroidered
What can be said about the stickers’ appearance? Actually, nothing bad, but there’s absolutely nothing to admire yet. The main feature is that the background turned out quite colorful and massive, but knowing the audience’s love for stickers without backgrounds – this becomes more of a problem. The holographic ones got a cool gradient on the tournament ornament, while the logos themselves strongly resemble PGL CS2 Major Copenhagen. It feels like the gold versions should become the main hit, as they look much more dimensional and stand out significantly when applied.
Embroidered, on the contrary – look cool when inspected in the main menu, but when applied are almost indistinguishable from paper. Perhaps VALVE wanted to add patches again but decided to experiment and try them on weapons. Also, one of the main problems seems to be the difficulty in using them for crafts; it seems the choice will fall on previous stickers.
It’s worth noting that some autographs have become much bolder, and now we don’t have extremely thin lines that are practically invisible when removing the background. However, on most stickers, when scraping the background, the appearance of the logo/autograph is also damaged, so scraping won’t be relevant for everyone.
For now, we suggest giving them only 6 out of 10.
Sticker Slab: A New Era for Stickers and Charms?
The most revolutionary part of the update – Sticker Slab (protective plate for stickers). It looks like a frame for collectible cards in TCG (Trading Card Game):
- How it works: Buy a Slab for $0.49 in the store, insert a sticker into it, attach it as a charm to your weapon.
- Key point: The sticker can be extracted back – the Slab breaks, but the sticker returns to your inventory. Unlimited times!
Market Impact
It’s hard to predict how this item will affect sticker prices, or if it will affect them at all. First impressions – this won’t change anything, since only one charm can be applied to a weapon, and sticker crafts force players to apply stickers directly to the body. It seems like this is another update “for the people,” when you can play with your favorite sticker without losing it.
It’s hard to predict how this item will affect sticker prices, or if it will affect them at all. First impressions – this won’t change anything, since only one charm can be applied to a weapon, and sticker crafts force players to apply stickers directly to the body. It seems like this is another update “for the people,” when you can play with your favorite sticker without losing it.
Also, a very interesting detail is that the design chosen for placing the sticker is a collectible card case. As if VALVE is directly hinting that stickers are really a memorable and valuable item (so Titan | Holo owners, breathe easy and go flex your item).
It’s possible that many rare stickers will rise in price, since now they can be bought not just for storage, but for use. It turns out VALVE will again raise market interest in items that have been sitting around, and expensive stickers will come out of storage for a walk from hand to hand on the trading platform (for which they’ll happily take their commission). We don’t think that because of this item, people will apply stickers less or that rare specimens will stop disappearing. Accounts with rare stickers can still get banned, lost, forgotten, and true fans and enthusiasts will prefer the good old application to weapons rather than a hanging charm.
Preliminary rating for Sticker Slab – 8 out of 10. Really good!
Gameplay Improvements and Fixes
More Changes to In-Game Store Items
- Recently purchased Name Tag and StatTrak™ Swap Tool items can no longer be sold or listed on the Steam Community Market (if you’ve had these sitting in your inventory for a while – check their value and ability to sell).
Fewer Bugs, More Possibilities
- Maximum effective speed sv_maxvelocity increased to 16,384 units per second. Default value of 3500 remains unchanged
- Fixed a case where clients incorrectly predicted jump button presses
- Fixed a case where clients incorrectly predicted jump peaks
- Fixed the skybox on Inferno that was blocking grenades
Why? Well, Let It Be
- Increased default bullet trace rendering distance
- Glove models and animation in the UI/inventory now use Animgraph2, matching first-person in-game gloves
- Enabled pulsing light on the C4 model
VALVE, Stop Copying Directly from Steam Inventory Helper
- Updated the Counter-Strike item color scheme on the Steam Community Market and web inventory to match item quality colors (we’ve had this feature implemented for a very long time already).
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.
