New analysis claims Valve generated more than $1 billion in revenue from Counter-Strike 2 during 2025, based on scraped Steam Marketplace data and estimates of in-game purchases.
The breakdown comes from YouTuber ZestyJesus, who said he and a collaborator built a tool to collect and aggregate sales data across the Steam Community Market, which he shared publicly, alongside publicly available case-opening statistics.
The data covers the period between November 2024 and November 2025, and separates Valve’s CS2 revenue into two main streams: the in-game store and the Steam Community Market.
How much does Valve earn from Counter-Strike 2?
According to the stats, players opened more than 400 million CS2 weapon cases over the year. Since each case requires a $2.50 key purchased directly from Valve, that translates to more than $1 billion in gross key sales alone. While skin creators receive a cut from cases they contribute to, ZestyJesus estimates Valve retains the majority of that revenue, based on historical creator splits seen in other Valve titles.
Beyond keys, in-game items such as Armory Passes, Major passes, music kits, and sticker capsules are also sold direct to players. However, there is no public data for these sales, and so it is conservatively estimated to account for hundreds of millions more in gross revenue.
The second major source is the Steam Community Market. ZestyJesus claims the scraped data shows more than 754 million CS2 item sales over the year, totaling roughly $1.22 billion in transaction value.
With Valve taking a 15 percent fee on each sale, that would result in approximately $166 million earned purely from market fees.
Combined, the analysis estimates Valve made well over $1.16 billion from Counter-Strike 2 in 2025, with the majority coming from keys and additional income generated passively through marketplace transactions. The creator described the figure as conservative, noting that several revenue streams cannot be measured precisely with publicly available data.
The marketplace is so popular partly due to the ability for players to trade CS2 items on third-party marketplaces, where they can receive real money for sales. Many items are now too expensive to trade on the marketplace, which has a $2,000 cap.
The most expensive recorded sale for a CS2 skin was over $1 million, paid by a collector for an exceedingly rare and desirable AK-47 skin.
Quando un microsecondo fa la differenza: la Luna avrà il suo orologio per le missioni spaziali