As a privately owned company, Valve keeps its financials private, which makes judging their earnings quite difficult. However, CSFloat has calculated the number of cases opened in 2023. Let's take a look at how much Valve may have earned from cases in 2023.
400 Million CS2 Cases Opened in 2023
In 2023, a staggering 400,318,821 cases were opened in CS:GO and CS2. This amounts to approximately 12 cases per second. Each case requires a key, priced at $2.50. Consequently, Valve earned over a billion dollars just from selling these keys. While governmental taxes take a substantial chunk out of that pie, there is no doubt that Valve made hundreds of millions on case sales alone.
On top of that Steam applies a flat fee on every market sale, ensuring a further cut on every case traded there. Savvy users can utilise various third-party marketplaces to bypass that trade tax and get the maximum return for their money.
Which case generated the most revenue for Valve in 2023?
The Dreams & Nightmares Case was the most frequently opened, accounting for about 13% of all cases opened. This translates to approximately 50.5 million cases. Interestingly, despite its popularity, this case doesn't yield the highest returns for players. In fact, players received skins worth only about $39 million from the $126 million spent on opening cases.
Here’s the top 5 cases on the list:
- Dreams & Nightmares Case
- Fracture Case
- Anubis Collection Package
- Recoil Case
- Snakebit Case
With a billion dollars spent, and an average return from opening cases of about 43%, players obtained skins worth about $422 million. This constitutes a significant portion of the estimated $3 billion skins market.
When were the most cases opened?
In 2023, there were three notable peaks in case openings. The first peak occurred in March with the release of the first CS2 trailers. The second peak was in April when the Anubis Collection Package was introduced. Lastly, there was a peak in September when CS2 became freely accessible to everyone.
Case openings were most frequent on Wednesdays, likely due to the distribution of weekly drops. Conversely, Mondays saw the fewest openings. Nonetheless, the difference in openings between days was relatively small.
So that’s how much money Valve made from case openings in its immensely successful “Dead Game”. And with how the game keeps going from high to high, that is only going to keep increasing.