In August 2022, CS:GO celebrates its tenth anniversary. In this regard, it is worth remembering a few interesting facts about when skins appeared in the game and what they were like. The update, in which the first skins were added, was released on August 14, 2013 – a little less than a year after the launch of the game itself.
The very first case in the game was simply called CS:GO Weapon Case. For the first time, knives also appeared in it, which will soon become one of the most expensive gaming items. During the beta test, the standard knives of the attack and defense sides were different: one used Flip Knife, and the others Bayonet. With the advent of the case, both types of knives were replaced with standard ones, and players now had to obtain these two themselves. In addition, , from Weapon Case dropped Gut Knife, M9 Bayonet and Karambit.
Initially, with the first case they planned to add skins for agents. On the one hand, such a decision seemed obvious – after all, before this, the hats from Team Fortress 2 and the images of heroes in Dota 2 had already gained popularity among players. However, the developers doubted: unlike the mentioned games, in CS:GO there is no opportunity to look at yourself from the outside. For example, in TF2 the camera changes position when the character performs some action, but in CS:GO there was no such option. In addition, the developers were afraid that the new character models would be less visible during the game, and this would have a negative impact on its competitive potential. As a result, they did not add agents then, and this type of skins for CS:GO appeared later.
Another feature that was added to the game in August 2013 was weapon inspection. This feature quickly gained popularity, and now players do not miss the opportunity to twirl their weapons in their hands. In addition, some skins now have special animations: for example, when you take out Nomad Knife, you can cut yourself.
When creating the skin system, the developers tried different solutions and saw how popular they would be among players. At first they thought that camouflage and realistic paint schemes would be in great demand, but in the end this turned out not to be the case. Skins with bright and unrealistic colors, such as AWP Boom, were made rare because they were thought to be less likely to be liked by players and would cause dissatisfaction if they dropped too often. However, in the end, everything turned out to be the opposite, and it was precisely these items that became the most expensive.
Adding a wear and tear system also seemed logical at first glance: the number of abrasions and other defects would reflect how much time the player spent with a given item. However, this gave rise to problems: it was impossible to find the optimal wear rate and develop effects that would look good on all skins. As a result, it was decided to abandon the idea of weapon wear – it remained in the form of fixed Float values, and time has shown that this was the right decision.
