Popular streamers gamble half a million dollars in ‘world record’ CS2 case opening

Counter-Strike case openings are nothing new with the in-game mechanic itself being quite a number of years old. However, in recent times, there seems to be a surge in popularity, with some streaming personalities spending big in hopes of securing rare knives, and even more elusive skin patterns.

The CS2 case opening scene has been building for a while with streamers such as Trainwreckstv, also known for his ties with Kick, and massive gambling sessions on sister company Stake, opening thousands of high-value cases.

However, TimTheTatman and Nadeshot, accompanied by Counter-Strike veteran ohnePixel and CS2 case whales, went even further on July 11, opening approximately $500,000 worth of cases, claiming it to be a ‘world record’ session.

During the extremely lengthy broadcast, the stream team opened a plethora of different case varieties, starting with the more ‘common’ eSports 2014 Summer Case, leading up to the extremely rare and expensive DreamHack 2013 Souvenir Package, Cobblestone Souvenir Package, and EMS Katowice 2014 Container, which can house some of the game’s most sought-after cosmetics.

Some notable wins during the whole thing were various Bayonets, multiple Vox Eminor (Holo) Katowice 2015 Stickers, and Team Dignitas (Holo) Katowice 2014 Sticker, with the latter potentially being worth around $30,000 on its own. Stickers of this ilk go for so much money on the market due to the capsules being incredibly old and released in limited quantities, with most of them having been opened some time ago.

While the big item prices are attractive, a LOT of cases were opened, expensive ones at that, with the vast majority yielding very little return on investment. Obviously, the regular CS2 player isn’t going to be opening this number, or even the type of cases these streamers do, but the odds are definitely in the house’s favor no matter what.

As for how the Counter-Strike skin market will progress post this, in our opinion, it’s only going in one direction, and that’s upwards. The cases and containers are only getting fewer, increasing the price of both the loot boxes themselves and the rare contents inside.

If you’re reading all of this and thinking about dabbling in some CS2 cases yourself, do remember that it is a form of gambling, akin to that of opening packs on EA FC games. But hey, at least you’ll hopefully get some form of return through CS2 cases since you can list the goodies on a market, contrary to that of EA FC where they’ll disappear into the aether every year.