This year, we should expect at least one more skin case. It’s possible that Valve will release it on the occasion of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s 10th anniversary. Moreover, there’s every reason to believe this case will bring us brand-new knives. Today, the CS.MONEY Blog is going to tell you what knives we should expect in the near future.
Types of knife finishes
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive receives new skins all the time. Cases and operations drop on a regular basis, new skins and agents appear, maps are updated — and everything along those lines. Among other things, the devs introduce new knives and finishes for them.
In 2013, when skins first appeared in the game, the knives were only available in a few finishes. Take the eSports 2013 Case, for example, out of which you could get five types of knives, each in one of the thirteen possible finishes:
- Fade;
- Slaughter;
- Crimson Web;
- Case Hardened;
- Boreal Forest;
- Blue Steel;
- Stained;
- Night;
- Forest DDPAT;
- Safari Mesh;
- Urban Masked;
- Scorched;
- No finish, Vanilla.
Then the list almost doubled. Currently, the same Karambit is available in twenty-five different colors. There are a marble gradient, tiger stripes, or gold with ornaments. New knife skins appeared along with the Gamma and Chroma Cases — and were named accordingly.
Notably, not all knives have received new skins. This is our first clue. Neither Classic Knife nor the four knives from Operation Shattered Web have yet received finishes from the two cases above.
Gamma knives & Chroma knives
Valve has mastered the art of creating and introducing new knives, which drop in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive gradually and in small portions. Thanks to that, the skin market doesn’t suffer from over-saturation. However, this also results in a considerable delay as far as the emergence of new knives is concerned.
For instance, the game got Gamma versions of knives from operations such as Wildfire and Breakout along with Operation Riptide. Just imagine: the Butterfly Knife waited five years for that Lore look. The Karambit Lore dropped back in 2016, while Butterfly Knife Lore didn’t arrive until 2021.
It’s logical to assume that the next new looks will get knives from Operation Shattered Web, as well as the Classic Knife from the case dedicated to the twentieth anniversary of the Counter-Strike series. Given that the dev team alternates new blades with new variants of older knives, we should expect to see these knives in the Chroma Case finish.
Anniversary
Another argument in favor of the case’s imminent appearance is that this August will mark ten years since the release of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Valve has already shown that they generally don’t mind commemorating anniversaries by releasing the CS20 Case. The CS:GO community is already gearing up for the tenth birthday of their favorite game. Just open the Workshop, and you’ll see countless items with the CSGO10 tag.
For Valve, this is a great opportunity to expand the pool of finishes for the Operation Shattered Web knives, as well as the Classic Knife. An additional advantage is that it’s super easy. All of the finishes from the Chroma Case are basically a square texture simply stretched over the knife model. So it’ll be no rocket science to ‘create’ new skins for the aforementioned knives.
Popularity of new blades
The last argument supporting our notion is the growing popularity of new knives. They increase in value and, pros use them more and more. Not so long ago, Oleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev flaunted his Nomad Knife Case Hardened with a blue blade — definitely not a ‘classic’ like the Karambit. Crystal-clear evidence that new knives have long been accepted as normal in both the player and collector communities. Valve can add new finishes to knives without fear of them being unpopular or damaging the position of other existing blades in the game.
Putting these circumstantial clues together, we conclude that Valve could release a case for the game’s anniversary and throw five knives with finishes from the Chroma Case into that box: Marble Fade, Doppler, Tiger Tooth, Damascus Steel, Ultraviolet, and Rust Coat.
Why knives and not, say, grenade skins?
The development team hasn’t added new item types to the game in a relatively long while, unless you count the shield. But we don’t count it, since it’s not in competitive mode.
The last such addition was the agents, and it faced mixed reception. Indeed, the indignation of the community was so great, and the agents themselves were so problematic, that the devs had to introduce a special setting allowing players to increase the characters’ visibility.
Now imagine the release of utility skins. Instead of your regular fragmentation grenade, you get flying disco balls or baseballs. Or not flying, but lying on the ground. Will this be a problem? At first, it certainly will: visibility is already pretty difficult because of the small size, and in case the nades change their appearance into the bargain, it will be a true disaster. In addition, these skins are unlikely to end up on the same shelf as knives and gloves.
The only serious competitor to knives is gloves. But we got to enjoy the drop of some new gloves appeared relatively recently, and the game now offers enough varieties of them. Nevertheless, even if Valve decides to add gloves to the next case, it doesn’t interfere with our guesses. Chroma knives will simply be postponed until the case after that one.
To sum it all up. Odds are, Valve is going to release a case for the anniversary of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. Obviously, it will contain rare items: knives or gloves. Most likely, it’ll be knives with the Chroma Case finish. And that’s badass!
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