CS2: The 'Doomsday' for the skin market arrives on October 30th
Demand for CS2 skins is about to face a critical test: on October 30, some players and investors are anticipating a potential "Doomsday" for the market. Why, and how great is the threat of a repeat collapse in the price of the rarest items?
Last week, the skin market for the cult shooter Counter-Strike 2 experienced a crash triggered by a Valve update. The update enabled players to craft knives and gloves using expensive red-tier (Covert) skins. The move not only alarmed owners and investors but also instantly wiped more than $2 billion off the market’s capitalization.
However, the negative quickly turned positive: many dreamers had the opportunity to acquire exclusive items at a 50-70 percent discount, and the resulting demand swiftly led to a market recovery.
Yet the situation remains far from simple.
A number of analysts are warning about the onset of "D-Day" (Doomsday), which will determine the long-term future of prices.
The main risk lies in the expiration of Valve’s 7-day trade cooldown. This is the moment when items become available again for trading and sale, and it will arrive on October 30, 2025, at 7:00:00 GMT.
The threat mechanism
Following the scandalous update that allowed using red (Covert) skins in the Trade Up Contract to obtain the rarest items (knives and gloves), many traders instantly crafted and sold these new high-tier items on third-party P2P platforms.
Selling on external platforms, rather than the Steam Marketplace, is always accompanied by a 7-day trade block, which prevents these items from immediately re-entering the Steam circulation.
The expiration of this block means that a huge volume of additional supply of expensive knives and gloves, obtained through crafting, could simultaneously flood the Steam Marketplace and third-party sites.
Others see the opposite outcome – that renewed trading could lift prices by as much as 10%. Steam itself agrees with this opinion, having reposted a supportive message.
The stress test
This sudden surge in supply will be a litmus test for the market.
If buyer demand can’t absorb the extra supply, the second wave of price collapse on knives and gloves could strike all those who invested in the market recovery.
It is safe to say that in the next 24 hours, all eyes of players, fans, and traders will be glued to the prices: will they grow, or will the selling pressure, caused by the mass release of items from "cooldown," resume with new force.
Recommended