Knives & Gloves Fever Update of 23.10.2025 CS2

October 23, 2025, can become one of the most impactful dates in Counter-Strike skins trading history. Thus, Valve changed the crafting logic for skins, allowing the exchange of 5 Covert (red) items for a knife or a pair of gloves, which violates the yearly stable trading laws and the uniqueness of the golden skins. Oh, and the Retakes mod is brought back to the official Matchmaking servers, but who cares except those veteran guys with default skins?

The List of Changes and Updates

So, here is what was presented for the CS2 community with the latest patch from Valve:

Knives and Gloves Can Be Crafted From Covert Items

Although Vavle called their October 23 update the “small” one, its impact is impossible to underestimate. They allowed crafting five Covert items into one Golden skin (if five “red” StatTraks, then you’ll get a “gold” with StatTrak). It will take weeks or even months for the market to stabilize, as the skins’ prices were launched on a rocket and are overcoming gravity.

Let’s dive into some short history to understand what’s going on. So, Valve revolutionized the game on August 14, 2013, when they added skins and cases, reactivating the importance of the shooter’s visual side. The presented skin's gradation was pretty clear: usually, a better-looking weapon painting costs more and is obtained from the case less often. Of course, there are plenty of examples when ugly skins cost a lot (like CS2 weapon with the highest float), but they are also implied in the market laws, as they are simply very rare and attract the attention of collectors.

For over a decade, knives & gloves were at the top of the CS2 skins chain, as getting golden items from the case had the lowest chance. Thus, even the cheapest knives in CS2 were above $60 per item, with the hand covers also costing more than 50 bucks. Even those playing regularly on official servers and getting weekly drops couldn’t afford even the cheapest knife without extra donations to the game.

Although players could exchange their lower-tier skins for the better ones in the game, crafting the golden ones was impossible, which kept prices for golden items pretty high. Now, this slight improvement (from a technical point of view) changes everything for the skins market, which has been stably growing and surpassed the $5-billion mark in May 2025. Unsurprisingly, many people used CS2 skins as digital assets, even if they didn’t play the game.

With this update, the value of Golden items fell significantly as the chances to get them not only increased, but they are now GUARANTEED. However, this game-changing move has already faced market-balancing laws, with Covert items skyrocketing in price as the fastest way to get in-game gold.

This knife & gloves fever will surely be treated, but it will take weeks or even months. Players will find the simplest and cheapest ways of getting the gold, which will boost not only Covert skins, but also those located lower in the CS2 items chain. The first day reports about a 20-30% decline in skin capitalization will be replaced by market recovery news, as all non-gold items' increases will compensate for the disaster with knives and gloves.

So, congrats on Steam and other skin-trading platforms that will benefit from the increased number of transactions. However, Valve has probably opened Pandora’s box, showing that virtual digital assets are under huge risk, as a few lines of code can immediately impact a multibillion-dollar market without any punishment or side control.

Return of Retakes Mode

Advanced players knew the Retakes mode was already available in CS2 on the third-party servers. However, Valve simplified this procedure, returning it to the official matchmaking, allowing players to earn in-game experience and warm up before the 5x5 clashes without extra moves. So, a classic 3 vs. 4 post-plant scenario is up for everyone who loves action without repeating a default tactic and hates eco-rounds.

Other Changes

The list of other minor changes, including map fixes, that don’t deserve more than one row:

1. Molotov’s interaction with Smokes was fixed (in the case of multiple grenades).
2. Improved vision on Inferno under the Balcony and top of the Quad, alongside some other optimizations.
3. Golden, Rooftop, and Palacio maps were updated and synchronized with the latest version from the Community Workshop variants.
4. Improved rendering of the inventory items and optimized review of the skins in the in-game menu.
5. Adjusted server-side sound processing and overall improvements in stability.