Counter-Strike Cases Brought Valve More Than $1 Billion in 2023

It seems that with each passing year, Valve has fewer and fewer financial incentives to develop new games, considering how much of a gravy train the company has been riding with its already-existing IPs. A great case in point has been highlighted recently by CS2 Case Tracker, which published a detailed 2023 Year in Review report showing that Counter-Strike 2's cases alone brought Valve more than $1 billion in revenue last year.

According to the report, players have opened more than 400 million cases in 2023, consuming nearly 360 million keys and spending $980 million on them. Taking into consideration the Steam Transaction Fee the company charges on the Community Market, as well as the large amount of cases and keys that get sold and bought there daily, it is highly likely that the milestone of $1 billion has indeed been achieved.

Out of all the cases, Dreams & Nightmares stood out as the most popular, having been opened more than 50 million times and contributing $126.3 million to Valve's revenue through key sales. The highest number of unboxings, 6.6 million, took place on April 25, the day following the release of the Anubis Collection Package, a case that requires no key for unboxing.

The report further notes significant spikes in unboxing activities during April and October, corresponding to the announcement and launch of Counter-Strike 2. Finally, the report unveiled that Wednesdays were the most favored days for case unboxings, with Mondays being the least popular. You can find the full report by visiting CS2 Case Tracker's official website.

Speaking of CS cases, previously, we also reported on an Austrian player who spent more than $15K buying Valve's loot boxes and managed to get their money back through court. You can learn how this feat was accomplished by clicking this link.