Valve reportedly making $54 million a month from CSGO cases

Skin trader and YouTuber Anomaly has seemingly crunched the numbers and reported Valve could be making $54 million in an average month just from CSGO case keys.

It should be no surprise that CSGO cases are Valve’s cash cow, as the game studio turned game publisher and distributor giant was a pioneer of in-game cosmetic microtransactions. 

YouTuber and skin trader, Anomaly, has decided to crunch the numbers and figure out just many cases are being opened each month, and how much money Valve is making from them. If his data holds true, it appears to be a staggering amount.

Anomaly was working on the calculations of Fjedjik, a user from the CSGO Market Forum subreddit. The user sought to calculate how many cases are being opened per month, and decided to use the database of CSGO float, a skin website. Using his own math formula alongside the database, he was seemingly able to calculate how many cases were being opened. 

Fjedjik estimated that from May 1, 2021 to June 1, 2021, a total of 25.9 million cases were unboxed. If we were to calculate the keys required to open the cases at $2.50 each, Valve would have made $65.75 million that month. 

Anomaly decided to expand Fjedjik’s calculations into January 2023 and found from May 2021 to January 2023, a total of 458 million cases were opened. If we were to break it down into 641 individual days, it’s around 714,509 cases per day. 

That means Valve could be earning $1,786,271.45 per day, according to the YouTuber’s calculations. That’s $54,355,263.16 per month on average and $651,989,078.25 per year.

Anomaly asked why this money is not put into prize pools for Majors, just like in Dota 2’s International. In Dota 2, the prize pool is funded by the community through cosmetic sales, but no such thing has been ever done for CSGO.

The prize pool for both Majors combined last year, $2.25 million, was just 0.34% of the amount Valve has earned from CSGO case keys alone. 

Anomaly also pointed out Valve once released cases specifically made to fund CSGO prize pools, called eSports Cases. The last one was in 2014.

After the cases, team stickers replaced it as a form of supporting players who participate in the yearly Majors, but it does not go to the prize pool, rather only a percentage goes to the teams and players.

Anomaly points out this is all just from the keys used to open the cases. Not including community market transaction fees, weapon name tags, and Prime Account sales. Let alone profits from Dota 2 and Steam.