While Counter-Strike: Global offensive quietly listed over 1.31 million actives, players were much more concerned with one thing: “Do I have the Agent I want?”
Prices skyrocketed as fans realized that Counter-Strike’s batch of agents might actually be collectibles instead of trading cards.
In fact, Counter-Strike hasn’t seen anything quite like this before. Previously, each operation came with a single case that would drop from players’ weekly rank ups. Shattered Web, on the other hand, technically has four cases.
While the player can only purchase and open one of them at their leisure, Web’s battle pass format comes with three additional cases that will drop weapons at predetermined spots on the pass.
This is where the agents come in. While the weapon drops from the collection serve to keep the economy rolling in its buy, craft, sell loop, the Agents provide the high-cost currency.
Until today, most either weren’t aware or didn’t realize that Agents don’t actually drop. Players can’t open them in a crate or trade up to the high-tier popular ones like Romanov or CSGO’s first female character, Ava.
These agents might never come to CSGO again
Agents come with the battle pass, but without spending real money it’s actually impossible to collect each of them. And since Agents don’t drop from any mechanic that we’ve seen, it’s easy to assume that once Operation Shattered Web ends, this chance to acquire this set of agents will end as well.
Many people realized that today and flocked to the steam market, overloading and at one point crashing the CSGO Item server that returns the information on items. Ava, for example, averaged around0 $9 over the past weeks.
She currently costs a whopping $90, showing a massive 1000% increase in price. People paid that much, too. Romanov hit 70% while even the Agents that were in single-cent territory made large gains on their position.
Despite the item server crash and the system being so overloaded that it could barely show correct prices, the charts say that people bought agents for anywhere from 20% to 1000% more than they did just one day before. It was a mad panic as players bought and bought until they were out.
Collectables like this, despite their price, are a draw that keeps players inside the game and outside of competitors. Valve has really thought this one through.
With Counter-Strike’s new record in the books and some pockets weighted down with their spoils of stockpiling agents while they were cheap, the player base is engaged and ready for more content. And it might just be around the corner in the form of Counter-Strike in Source 2.
