Almost $1 Billion Was Spent on Counter Strike Cases Last Year

Cases and Keys are a big part of Counter Strike which I personally don’t understand, I’m not paying for a random chance at getting a weapon skin, bugger off. Despite my reluctance to get involved, many fans are involved in case gambling, so much so that almost $1 Billion USD was spent on it just last year alone.

Nearly $1 Billion Spent on Counter Strike Cases Last Year

CSGOCaseTracker.com recently shared a year in review datasheet that covered various statistics surrounding Counter Strike cases through 2023. This included a staggering 400,318,821 cases opened which, alongside 359.6 million keys consumed, equated to $980 Million USD spent in 2023. This high amount of spending likely coincides with the 178% on average increase in case prices with the Danger Zone case increasing the most by 492%, and the CS:GO Weapon Case increasing by $25USD. The most popular case of the year was the Dreams & Nightmares case which made up a staggering $126.3 million in key sales, about 13% of the $980 Million.

The vast majority of all these case openings occurred at two key points in the year which included the announcement of CS2 in March, and the official launch of CS2 in September. In April the total case openings peaked at 50.3 million with April 25th marking the highest daily peak at 6.6 million cases, this came following the release of the Anubis Collection Package which did not require a key to unbox.

That’s a lot of money flowing through this game just for some weapon skins, it makes you wonder why we criticize the cosmetic loot box mechanics in other games yet Valve seems to get a free pass with this.