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Introduction

The term ‘skins’ refers to the tradable textures of in game items such as ‘weapons’ or ‘gloves’ in games such as CS-GO, H1Z1 and PUBG. These skins are on an open public market and sometimes are limited to a certain number released by Valve, this can correlate to the prices. Here is a link to a Youtuber’s account (Anomaly) who makes videos trading CS-GO skins. Lately Valve (The owners and creators of CS-Go) have made an update which many skin traders are unhappy about (They added a seven day cool down after you buy or sell a skin, meaning the movement of the skin is frozen for seven days) here is a link to Anomaly’s informative video on this topic if you want to know more (Valve Killed Trading).

The prices skins fluctuate over time like stocks. CS-GO skins in particular, have a condition rating which heavily effects the price, here is a table of all the conditions that weapons for CS-GO skins can have,                                                                                                    This is the hierarchy of condition from best (1) to worst (5),

Condition	Example
1. Factory New (FN)
2. Minimal Wear (MW)
3. Field-Tested (FT)
4. Well-Worn (WW)
5. Battle-Scarred (BS)

Here is a video showing the gradual difference in condition for the skin displayed above (M4A4 – Faded Zebra)

Skins

Skins, also referred to as finishes, are a new feature in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, introduced in the Arms Deal update. They are weapons with different textures that can be equipped in-game. They are entirely cosmetic, holding no gameplay function.

To acquire a skin, one must either:

Earn them through random drops by playing in online community and official servers.
“Uncrate” them from opening weapon and promotional containers.
Trade 10 skins for one of a higher rarity with a Trade Up Contract.
Trading with other players. Buying skins from the Steam Market is considered a trade.
Also, some variants include a StatTrak™ device, a counter that shows the total amount of kills acquired with the weapon by the current owner. Pressing the inspect key [F] (default) will allow the player to ‘inspect’ the gun in greater detail and give a better view of the StatTrak™ counter. The player character will turn and inspect both sides of the gun before returning to normal aiming. The inspection can be canceled by reloading, shooting, or switching the weapon.

Access to the inventory is unavailable when the player is alive and after the warm-up in Competitive game.

Many skins also have unique descriptions, and provide extra flavor text to their weapon descriptions. A number of them reference characters in CSGO campaigns.

Weapon Quality

Weapons skins come in different quality grades, generally signifying their rarity and value.

Quality	Notes
White (Common) Consumer grade, Base grade	Drop sound:
Light blue (Uncommon) Industrial grade	Drop sound:
Darker blue (Rare) Mil-spec, High grade	Drop sound:
Purple (Mythical) Restricted, Remarkable	Drop sound:
Pinkish purple (Legendary) Classified, Exotic	Drop sound:
Red (Ancient) Covert, Extraordinary	Drop sound*:
Gold (Exceedingly Rare) ★ Melee Weapons	Drop sound*:
Yellow Orange (Immortal) Contraband (discontinued)	Drop sound*:

Exceedingly rare items (including Gloves) all contain a star in their name.In addition, stock weapon “skins” are also color coded with dark brown in the in-game inventory, though they cannot be viewed in the Steam Market or Steam inventory as they cannot be traded.

Here are some skin trading sites : CSGO Live, Skinhub, Hellcase & CS:GO Stash

Skin Randomization

Some mechanics were introduced to make sure that every skin in the game is unique.

Exterior Quality

• 

  UMP-45 Corporal (Factory New)

A random exterior quality is chosen when a weapon skin is dropped, uncrated or received from a Trade Up Contract. The exterior quality simulates randomized wear and tear on the skin. The rarity of the exterior quality is based on a bell curve for most weapons, with extreme Factory New and extreme Battle-Scarred being the rarest.

The wear quality is represented by a float value in game data. The closer it is to 0, the higher its quality is. The closer it is to 1, the lower its quality is.

Different finish styles have different effects for lower weapon quality.

A weapon’s exterior quality will not degrade over time and can never be changed.

The exterior quality hierarchy is the following, from best to worst:

1. Factory New (FN)
2. Minimal Wear (MW)
3. Field-Tested (FT)
4. Well-Worn (WW)
5. Battle-Scarred (BS)

Randomization

Based on the finish style used, the same skin may have different looks due to variations with texture offset and displacement.

Available skins

Excluding knife skins, weapon skins are organized by collections. The contents of a single case outside of the rare items are considered to be in a single collection. The collections for other non-case restricted random item drops are related to their themes, which are often based around the theme of a single map, like the Nuke Collection, though some Operation random item drops can have other themes, like the Gods and Monsters Collection.

The collection the randomly dropped weapon skins are in are not dependent on what map the player was playing. For example, playing on Train will not guarantee the player a skin from the Train collection.

Opening weapon crates will give the player one weapon from the weapon crate’s series.

Console Commands

The console commands related to end match drop, inventory can be found in game files,but are still unusable and is only available in developers version of the game.

• • Counter-Strike: Global Offensive

Server Variable

• sv_endmatch_item_drop_interval_rare
  • Default value is unknown.
  • The time between drops on the end match scoreboard for rare items

• sv_endmatch_item_drop_interval_mythical
  • Default value is unknown.
  • The time between drops on the end match scoreboard for mythical items

• sv_endmatch_item_drop_interval_legendary
  • Default value is unknown.
  • The time between drops on the end match scoreboard for legendary items

Economy Variable

• econ_droppaintedgun
  • Default value is unknown.
  • econ_droppaintedgun drops given mid match will show up on the end match scoreboard if this is set.

• econ_debug_loadout_ui
  • Default value is unknown.
  • Allows to debug loadout UI.

• econ_enable_inventory_images
  • Default value is unknown.
  • Enables or Disable inventory images.

• econ_weapons_fully_customizable_buy_menu
  • Default value is unknown.
  • Allow to customize buy menu (Dev only)

• econ_build_pinboard_images_from_collection_name
  • Default value is unknown.
  • “EX: econ_build_pinboard_images_from_collection_name set_aztec -1”

Unused Content

• An unused finish named “GO Camo” described as “It has been painted using a hydrographic in the Global Offensive camo pattern.” can be found in game files.
• An unused FAMAS skin with an ASCII theme can be found in game files.
• According to game files, items originally could drop during a round instead of at the end of the match.
• Spectators at some point were able to inspect the weapon of the player they were spectating.

Trivia

• Finishes/Skins were referred as “PaintKits” in game files.
• At one point during the development process, the exterior quality of the weapon was intended to wear down over time to show the weapon’s veteran status, but this idea was eventually abandoned after testing and re-evaluating individual skins.
• The rarity of the weapons was established based on what the developers thought would be the more popular skins (lower tiers) as a form of mitigating the risk of bright, goofy or unrealistic skins (higher tiers). This was proved wrong after the weapon skins launched, as it was apparent the Global Offensive community preferred the more unique and brightly colored skins and newer weapon collections have tailored to reflect the community preference.
• Some unused qualities also exist in the in-game files, likely copied from other Source engine games. These unused qualities have include UNNAMED, Clandestine, Violet (Haunted and Completed), “Toxic” green (Customized), Rose red (Developer).
  • The “UNNAMED” quality is specified in the game’s files, but it doesn’t have an associated color.

External links

• Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – Official Content on Steam Workshop
• Weapon Finishes Guide

REFERENCES

Counter Strike Wiki

Steam Community

CS:GO Stash

1. ↑ https://csgostash.com/lore
2. ↑ Building the Content that Drives the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Economy on YouTube
3. ↑ http://blog.counter-strike.net/workshop/finishes/randomization.html

v • d • e Containers

In the Steam Market and in-game inventory, all general skins have a white border around the preview icon, while knives are bordered with Purple, StatTrak™ weapons with Orange, Souvenir weapons with Yellow, and self-made Prototype skins with Green.