Valve does not talk about its finances. Finding out how much Valve earns is not so easy. However, Csgofloat calculated how many cases were opened in 2023. CS.MONEY Blog is trying to calculate how much Valve earned from cases in 2023 and what was the most popular cases to open.
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How many cases were opened in 2023 in CS2?
Let’s start with the main and most shocking thing. In 2023, 400,318,821 cases were opened in CS2. How much is this? A lot. This is approximately 12 cases per second. In other words, by the time you finished reading to this point, a hundred cases have been opened in CS2 worldwide. In terms of money, the amount is huge also. The key to each case costs $2.50. Valve received a little more than a billion US dollars from the sale of keys alone in 2023. Stunning, isn’t it?
Of course, part of this money went to various types of expenses. For example, taxes. In the US, the federal tax is 21%, so a fifth of this amount definitely went to the treasury of the United States of America. In addition, there are state taxes, skin creator royalties (reportedly around 1-1.50% for each skin in a case), and other factors that reduce the income from opening cases. But even after all the subtractions, a huge amount remains, estimated in hundreds of millions of dollars.
Which case brought in the most money for Valve?
In 2023, the most frequently opened case in CS2 was Dreams & Nightmares Case. It accounts for approximately 13% of all open cases. In absolute terms, this is 50.5 million! Interestingly, this case has one of the lowest payback rates. Having opened cases worth $126 million, players received skins worth approximately $39 million in return.
Fracture Case sits second in terms of items opened, and the third place is occupied by the Anubis Collection Package. In addition to them, the top 5 most opened cases in 2023 also includes the Recoil and Snakebite cases. All cases, except the Anubis Collection Package, are from the CS2 Weekly Drop.
How much is it in skins?
People spent a billion dollar on CS2 keys in 2023, but after opening the cases, they obviously didn’t get a billion back, that’s not how it works. The average return on opening cases is 43%. This means that in 2023, $422 million worth of skins were pulled out of cases. Almost half a billion!
It is estimated that the current size of the entire skins market is around three billion dollars, so last year players dropped skins for approximately 1/7 of the entire skins market in Counter-Strike 2.
When were the cases opened the most?
2023 had three peaks of case opening waves. The first one was in March and was associated with the first CS2 trailers. The second peak happened in April and is tied with the introduction of Anubis Collection Package, and these cases alone, mind that they were released in April, are 1/10 of the overall amount of cases opened. The third peak was in September, when everyone gained free access to CS2.
By days of the week, cases were most often opened on Wednesday which is logical: players received cases from the weekly drop pool and immediately opened it. But on Monday, people opened the least. However, by day of the week, distribution is much more equal and the highs and lows between days are several percent.
If you are a fan of opening cases, CS.MONEY gives you advice: you can sell your trophies from case hunting on CS.MONEY and buy skins instead of opening more cases.
