Valve admitted the failure of the dynamic pricing system in Counter-Strike 2 and released a new series of stickers
Valve recently introduced new stickers with the results of the Cologne Major (IEM Cologne Major 2026). The sticker design indicated the team's final place in the tournament.
This time, the developers did not use capsules for the event — containers from which random stickers drop. Instead, players were offered to buy specific stickers for tokens, with the price being dynamically formed.
Now Valve has admitted that the dynamic sticker pricing system did not work well:
The original dynamic pricing system determined relative interest in players and teams but did not provide reasonable prices, so the final stickers are cheaper but have the same price ratio as the tournament series stickers (as of today's update).
Players in Counter-Strike 2 previously criticized this system. Sometimes the “dynamic price” of stickers could exceed the Steam balance limit of $2000.
Esports organizations were also not thrilled. One of the teams that dropped out of the event in the first stage told HLTV representatives that they earned “about 60 thousand dollars” from merchandise sales (or 120 thousand, considering that the same amount went to players under the new “50/50” system). These figures pale in comparison to the event in Budapest, where sticker capsules brought in about 600 thousand dollars. Another organization that dropped out in the second stage managed to earn “just over 120 thousand dollars”.
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