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VAC Live watching a Silver II player hit one clean ace: 🚨🚨🚨 VAC Live watching spinbotters queue Premier: 😴 300+ comments in the same Steam megathread since Rush Hour. Two patches since then, and classic zero words about anti-cheat 🥰

🤡SIH DATAMINERS FOUND PREVIOUSLY UNLEAKED EGG SKINS FROM THE NEW CS2 UPDATE Hurry and share with your friends so they can check out the new skins before anyone else!

Eight years ago "s1mple" on B was enough for apEX to call the rotate 😅 Who was actually the scariest player in that era?

Found the most useful job for a future pro CS player?🧠

🎖 Free easy limited item for TF2 ÜBERFEST is running right now, KritzKast's annual TF2 tournament, and this time Valve did something that's never happened in the game before, handing out an animated medal just for watching the broadcast.

Activate Steam Market access for $0.01 🧐 If an account doesn’t buy anything in the Steam store for a year, Community Market shuts off. Steam wants a new purchase, older then 7 days. Just add Zombie Hunter to the library (it’s F2P), and buy the Editor Pack in item store 🫡

The laziest Steam investment almost nobody talks about in 2026 😅 People keep asking if there’s a way to sit in CS2 trading without staring at charts all day. There isn’t a clean one. Closest thing is just parking buy orders on Steam and forgetting they exist. A buy order is you saying "I’ll take this at X" It sits there until it fills or you cancel. Steam doesn’t pick the newest bid. At the same price it fills the oldest one first, so a month-old order jumps a yesterday order. And if someone lists under your number, you don’t pay your bid. You pay the listing. That’s the whole trick. You set it, money sits on the wallet, and every now and then a cheap listing walks into your stack. No flipping. No watching Buff every night. It also sucks in the ways people don’t mention until they’re in it. Wallet on Steam is stuck. Popular items have a wall of older orders in front of you, so you can wait months. And the order only stops you from overpaying today. If the item keeps dumping, you still bought the bag. Cases are where this idea usually shows up. Active drop cases look "safe" because supply is supposed to shrink when Valve rotates them. That’s not a mechanic, that’s a guess on Valve. Would you even put money into this right now? And which buy orders actually look worth sitting on? 👀

This the CS2 competitive scene in 2026 or what? 🤡 Someone shipped a third-party Slur Tracker that listens to match chat, counts slurs, and dumps players onto a public ranking. The joke writes itself until you see people treating it like an actual grind. Instead of staying off the list, a chunk of the playerbase started spamming on purpose to climb. Top 25 already sits around 976 logged uses. Billypastaking is still P1 😠

Dataminers aren’t sleeping this week 😅 About 12TB of old Steam archives from 2003–2013 just spilled out. Nobody hacked Valve in 2026 an old public endpoint was sitting open and people finally grabbed the whole thing 🧐 What’s in there so far: early Portal 2, Left 4 Dead with a different UI and cut maps, a very early CS:GO still talking about a shield, and a Weaponizer model everyone immediately tied to Half-Life 3 / Episode 3. Spoiler: it’s an asset, not a finished game. Also not just Valve. Third-party stuff is in the dump too, including Sonic betas. That’s the part that’s going to make publishers twitch ☠️

Today is the last day of summer. How much cases you've opened this season?

Another CS2 update, and still not for matchmaking 🙃 Last night’s update is aimed at map makers. Custom HUD / in-map menus got cleaner setup after workshop feedback, plus a new debug convar: panorama_debug_treat_all_addons_as_untrusted. If you just queue Premier, just skip another one patchnote. If you build workshop maps, this is the part Valve actually keeps shipping 👀

BUFF just made spending your balance a lot harder ☠️ Starting August 31, paying with site funds (WeChat Pay included) needs a payment password. Setting it up means confirming the same bank card, real-name data and phone number already tied to the account. That's fine if the account is actually yours. A lot of non-CN traders never verified it themselves, someone else did that years ago, and they can't repeat it now. Not a full marketplace freeze. Same move IGXE and ECOSteam already made. But if you've got unused BUFF balance sitting there, waiting until the 31st is a bad idea. Spend it or convert it into items first. Fresh listings can wait until it's clear who can still check out. Expect some liquidity to leak toward Steam for a couple weeks while people scramble 🧐

Friday night, CS2, and another round of 2v2 action — we're back🤩 After our first SIH Friday Clash, we're running it again. Grab a teammate and join another Wingman tournament on FACEIT 🧐 ⚔️ Tournament format Game: Counter-Strike 2 Mode: Wingman 2v2 Teams: 16 💰Prize? $50 in SIH Balance for the winning team. Each of the two players on the winning roster will receive $25 in SIH Balance. 📅 When August 28, 2026 Start: 19:00 CEST

Reports coming out of farming chats tonight 😅 Alongside the latest CS2 update, a noticeable wave of bans is hitting DM panels and 2x2 setups. Some people are getting old delayed bans, others are seeing fresh ones land. No clean pattern yet, but the volume of new reports is higher than usual, and most people are convinced that the Overwatch played a significant role in this wave 🧐 Still early and unconfirmed on the exact scale, but enough noise in the usual channels to keep an eye on it.

Steam’s festival calendar is doing numbers this week 🤪 Anthro Festival just went live discounts on games with talking animals, running through August 24. Three days after it ends, the "Hentai vs Furry" festival starts on the 27th. The scheduling is almost too clean. Whether you find it funny or just very on-brand for the platform, the timing is hard to ignore. Anyone actually browsing these 4 real? 🤫

Volume still holds up, but a lot of the bigger holders are stepping back 🥲 High-profile inventories are getting lighter and more people who were deep in are choosing to sit this part out. The last run had too much artificial heat, so the cooldown was always going to drag. Doesn’t feel like the market is dying feels more like the part of the cycle where it’s just easier to wait for better conditions. You guys seeing this as the start of something cleaner, or just more of the same?🤔

CS2’s concurrent numbers keep sliding 🥲 Peak players dropped from 1.72M in March to about 1.33M over the last 30 days. Average concurrent went from roughly 1.09M in February down to ~843k. That’s the steepest sustained decline the game has seen since launch. Content drought + ongoing cheat issues + a soft skin market have all been cited as reasons. Whatever the mix, the trend is clear and it’s been going for months. Do you think CS2 turns this around without a major content or anti-cheat drop from Valve, or does it need something big to stop the bleed? 🤨

One cheeseburger per month could solve your problem 🥲

NO

Steam is giving away free profile cosmetics again 🥳 Choices Matter Festival just dropped a full set: animated avatar, exclusive frame, and four stickers. All you have to do is open the festival page and finish the short quiz. Answers don’t matter just click through to the end. Items drop straight into your inventory. Available until August 17. Feels like one of those rare "old Valve" moments where they actually hand out free stuff without making you jump through ten hoops 🥲 We miss it...

Someone's already get invitation to the new CS2 overwatch? 👀

Someones get invitation? 👀

Soon we'll reach the point where playing CS2 will look like this 🤡well, at least without cheaters

Soon we'll reach the point where playing CS2 will look like this 🤡well, at least without cheaters

Steam quietly broke Trade Protect again 🤡 Items that already passed their protection timer are still showing as not tradeable / not marketable. The date is expired, the shield should be gone, but the status just sits there. We’ve been seeing isolated cases for about two weeks. Today the volume of reports from SIH users jumped hard multiple stuck items inside the same inventories, not just one-offs. Looks like it shifted from "occasional glitch" to something more widespread. No statement from Valve yet. Could be a side effect of the individual item timer changes, or something they touched over the weekend. Either way, a lot of people currently can’t list or move items that should already be free 🥲

Is a major CS2 update on the horizon? 🧐 A 3rd huge wave of farm VAC bans took place last night; it was one of the largest mass bans in recent memory. And as we all know from the "lessons of CS history," 90% of the time, events like this are linked to an upcoming major update that affects the economy 🫡 What do you think? Is there really going to be an update, or is it just a coincidence?

Fresh datamine from Molekuryatnik on the latest CS2 patch 😈 Hidden in the files is a new string tied to sorting items by type inside the equipment tab. The existing filters already work fine, so this doesn’t look like a random cleanup. It looks more like the UI is being prepped for something that isn’t in the game yet. The equipment tab itself has had unused slots that line up suspiciously well with grenades (and a few other utility items) for a while now. That’s why a lot of people are reading this as early groundwork for grenade skins or at least some new category of equipment cosmetics. Still pure speculation at this stage. Could end up being something else entirely. But the combination of a new sort filter + the way that tab is structured is the most interesting signal we’ve had in a minute 🫤 Would grenade skins actually move the market, or is this the kind of thing that stays niche? 🙄

Once Upon a Skin: The First Workshop Entries for VALVE’s Fairy Tales Contest VALVE has rolled out another themed Workshop contest, and this time the prompt is about as rich as they come: fairy tales. These are the events we enjoy most. When hundreds of submissions share a common thread, it’s immediately clear who just slapped a “magical” palette on their gun and who actually sat down and built a story. One thing you’ll notice right away: the theme says Fairy Tales, but nobody’s boxing themselves in. There’s the Brothers Grimm, Greek mythology, Japanese yokai, Amazonian legends. And that’s fine, because VALVE almost always rewards the idea and the execution over how literally you stuck to the brief. So we combed through the Workshop and pulled out the pieces that grab you, whether with story, visuals, or the sheer nerve of the concept. Let’s dive in! 👇

The Major No Longer Bankrolls the Scene: Breaking Down HLTV’s Report on the Sticker Economy Collapse HLTV has dropped a major investigation into what the Major economy has become since Valve buried the sticker capsule and moved IEM Cologne stickers over to direct, token-based sales. The findings aren’t pretty: team revenue has cratered, contracts drawn up around the old model are stuck in limbo, and some organizations are seriously asking whether there’s any point in treading water in this ecosystem at all. One team knocked out in the first stage put it in plain terms — a disaster for the scene. We already broke down the mechanics of the change in a separate piece on “the end of the capsule era,” so we won’t rehash how the Major Shop, tokens, and Souvenir-O-Matic actually work. Today’s conversation is about something else: was this predictable, will Valve keep the new system alive, and what does all of it mean for the market — and for anyone sitting on a stash of Cologne stickers? 👉 Let's go! >>> blog.sih.app/en/news/the-maj…

This might be the first CS2 Major where the classic sticker discount never shows up 🥲 The token + dynamic pricing system completely broke the old rhythm. In previous Majors almost everyone waited for that post-event (or late-Major) sale window. Right now a big part of the market is still sitting on the sidelines doing the exact same thing… while the stickers people actually want keep getting more expensive through pure demand. Even if Valve eventually throws some kind of token discount, the dynamic pricing will probably just push the good ones straight back to the ceiling. The usual "wait for the sale" play looks a lot less reliable this time around 🤬 Are you still holding out for a discount on Cologne stickers, or have you already switched to treating this system as the new normal?

NO WAY! A leak of the upcoming CS2 update is here 🤡

SIH SDA (Steam Desktop Authenticator) just moved into your pocket 📱 For years a lot of traders kept a desktop running 24/7 just to confirm trades and protect the account. That era is over. SIH Mobile is live — the same authenticator trusted by millions, now on your phone. What actually matters: — Import from SIH SDA in a couple of minutes —Everything stays on your device (local encryption, no third-party servers) —2FA codes work offline —Biometric login + fast multi-account switching —Instant trade and market order confirmations 🛡️ No more leaving a PC on. No more exposing secret keys anywhere. Which side do you actually prefer right now: the classic Steam Guard client for its "gaming and social" features, or SDA clients that are more specialized for multi-account management and trading? 🫡

A bomb explosion in CS2 will now extinguish a smoke grenade and fire from a Molotov 🫡

Valve's solution: If you can't fix your anti-cheat in CS2, just remove it! 🧐 Best update ever?

New Armory collections just dropped and the market is already giving them the cold shoulder 🥲 Early listings and trade-up math are painting a pretty rough picture. Even the strongest one in the batch is barely clearing 60% expected return, while others are sitting in the low 50s or worse. The sticker side of the update isn't looking much better either. What's interesting is how fast this happened. Usually new collections get some kind of honeymoon period where hype carries prices for a bit. This time the numbers came in cold almost immediately 🧐 Part of it's probably just the sheer volume of supply hitting at once through the Armory system. Another part might be that the themes didn't land with enough people to create real long-term demand. Think these collections still find their footing once the initial flood settles, or is this one of those rare cases where the market nailed the valuation on day one?

Record-low ROI as the first wave of new CS2 skins hits the market? Arabesque and Spy Tech just came off trade ban, and prices are so low even the farmers themselves are surprised. Fresh market data: AK-47 | Consequence of the Jinn in FT going for $150-200, MW version of the same skin sitting at $350, and AWP | Sovereign Flame in FN trading at $1,500 while the Battle-Scarred version of the exact same skin goes for $100. Multiple reasons stacking on top of each other here. First, with rotation MIA for so long, farmers piled up a massive stockpile of Armory Stars and supply spiked hard. Second, the FN odds got heavily gutted right at collection launch, so nearly all the value is concentrated in that one condition, while MW and below trade almost at consumer-grade prices despite looking visually identical to FN. That's exactly why you're seeing these gaps, MW and FN of the same skin can differ 3-5x with almost no visible wear difference🤡 As for the collections themselves, chatter in trading circles is pretty unified, most people just aren't feeling the skins visually, and that's directly hitting demand. Combine that with the ROI situation and the whole thing has honestly killed a chunk of the hype. That said, some traders are already picking up specific positions they consider undervalued, betting on a price correction upward once the market actually finds where these things should sit 📈 There's a flip side worth mentioning too. The fact that farming stars turned into such a rough ROI at launch might cool off the farming scene overall, which long-term is actually healthy for the Armory as a system. Naturally a lot of Star holders are choosing to sit on their stock right now, waiting to see the broader reaction once things hit the wider market, so both Arabesque and Spy Tech could still see a dump at some point down the line 👀 How do you feel about this launch for the new collections?

We'll all get to experience it soon! 🙏🙏🙏 Less than an hour left until the first wave of skins from the CS2 The Spy Tech and Arabesque collections is unlocked 😈 What do you think guys: what does the future hold for these skins in terms of price?

Quick review of tonight's CS2 update🤡

Quick review of tonight's CS2 update🤡

This is actually happening 😅 Real national teams in CS2 with strict roster rules — no stacking the five best players on the planet under one banner. Qualification through tryouts in almost 100 countries, only 24 teams make it to Riyadh in November. The format completely flips the usual superteam meta we’re used to. Suddenly it’s not about which org has the best five, but which country has the deepest talent pool right now. SIH cooked up these projected top 7 rosters based purely on nationality and current form. Denmark looking scary on paper with that IGL core, Russia with donk + mONESY + sh1ro firepower, Ukraine still dangerous even without some names. But the real question is how this plays out when the pressure is actually on the flag and not the org logo. Which of these lineups do you think actually has the best shot once the bracket starts? Or you got a dark horse nation that’s being slept on? 🧐

The best BLAST ever coming? 😎

This one so warm

CS2 has gone offline — servers around the world went down after the update 🤨 P.S If your game crashes, clear the shader cache, verify the integrity of the game files, and then restart the game. The bug will most likely be fixed soon 🧐

On the Shelter map, a dog is being held hostage 🥲

On the Shelter map, a dog is being held hostage 🥲