A large number of CSGO skins, with an estimated value of 700,000 USD (578,000 GBP) have been hacked and stolen from the popular Counter-Strike exchange site CSGOEXO, which is currently offline as it tries to recover elements of Steam and Valve. This comes as the FPS game grows in popularity, with CSGO breaking its own concurrent player record twice in the same month.
If you’re unfamiliar with the world of CSGO skins and trading, the shooter essentially has its own digital economy, with players buying and selling in-game items like weapon skins and decals, often at discounted prices. incredibly high.
Prices for weapon skins in CSGO are based on their rarity and “float” value, essentially a measure of how often they have been used in-game. A skin with a float of 0.00 is the most valuable , because it essentially sits unused – imagine buying a rare action figure and never taking it out of the box. The 1.00 float skins are the most worn and therefore the least valuable.
A CSGO skin, the “Kaambit Hardened Case Blue Gem” for the game’s combat knife, is said to be worth around 1,500,000 USD (1,238,000 GBP). A version of the M4 ‘Howl’ skin, pictured below, sold in 2020 for US$100,000 (£82,000 GBP).
Counter-Strike skins are traded between players using various sites and platforms. CSGOEXO is one such trading post, and now it says it was hacked, with intruders stealing $700,000 worth of CSGO skins.
“The CSGOEXO.COM website is temporarily unavailable,” reads a warning on the site’s homepage, “as $700,000 worth of skins were unfortunately illegally stolen from the site in the early hours of February 15th. We will do our best to restore normal operation of the website. We have already contacted Steam.
The site’s owners also claim to have identified the perpetrators of the hack, providing links to the Steam profiles of three different people. CSGOEXO does not specify which skins were stolen, or provide a time or date when the site can be restored, meaning users are currently locked out of their accounts and unable to trade.
This comes as CSGO skyrockets in popularity on Steam. On February 11, the shooter broke its all-time concurrent user record, with 1,302,219 players logging in at the same time. Just over a week later, on February 19, that record was broken again, with CSGO measuring 1,324,800 concurrent users.
If you’re a big CSGO fan, you might want to check out some of the other best free games on Steam. You can also choose the best free shooting games for pc.