Valve's 2019 key change: why CS2 keys can't be traded or sold

On 28 October 2019 Valve ruled that every CS:GO key bought in the game from then on would stay in the account that bought it: no trades, and no sales on the Steam Community Market. Its reason was that "worldwide fraud networks" had started using keys to cash out, and that nearly all keys being traded or sold were believed to come from fraud. The rule still covers every key bought in CS2; this is what Valve said, why keys suited fraud, and how the rule has held up.

What a key was before October 2019

Cases, which Valve calls containers, hold cosmetic items such as weapon skins, and each one opens only with a key. Players earned cases by playing and got keys either from the in-game store or, for real money, from other players.

Until the change, a key could change hands like a skin. It could be traded to another account or listed on the Steam Community Market, Valve's own marketplace, where a sale pays out in Steam Wallet funds rather than cash.

What Valve said on 28 October 2019

Valve's post, titled "Key Change", ran to five short paragraphs. It opened with the rule: keys bought in the game "can no longer leave the purchasing account", while keys bought earlier were unaffected and could still be traded and sold.

Then came the reason. Most key trades Valve had seen in the past were between legitimate customers, but "worldwide fraud networks have recently shifted to using CS:GO keys to liquidate their gains", that is, to turn the proceeds of fraud into money. "At this point, nearly all key purchases that end up being traded or sold on the marketplace are believed to be fraud-sourced," Valve wrote, so newly bought keys would no longer be tradable or marketable.

Valve stressed what stayed the same. For "the vast majority" of players, who buy keys to open cases, "nothing changes": a key could still be bought and used on a case in the same inventory. It admitted the rule "will impact some legitimate users" and invited feedback by email under the subject "Key Restriction".

The claim was narrower than some headlines. The Guardian's read "Counter-Strike trading found to be 'nearly all' money laundering", but Valve's "nearly all" covered key purchases that ended up traded or sold, not trading in general. Valve gave no numbers, and its post never used the words money laundering.

How a key could turn fraud into cash

Valve didn't explain the scheme. The Economist wrote that the company released no further details and didn't answer its request for information, and The Guardian noted that Valve did not go into detail. Both papers offered their own reading.

The Economist's reading, broken into steps:

1. Keys were bought from Valve with stolen credit cards.
2. The keys then changed hands between accounts on Steam's marketplace.
3. Steam pays out no cash, so the value had to be sold on outside it. The Economist pointed to third-party websites that sell accounts already loaded with Steam funds, and to gamers glad to get games or items cheaply.

The Guardian pointed to credit card fraud and other financial crime, and to a familiar pattern: criminals turn stolen identities into money by buying digital goods and reselling them, as they had done with iTunes and Amazon gift cards. A key suited that pattern. Going by the discussion on Reddit, Rock Paper Shotgun suggested that keys had a consistent price across all of Steam, which is why traders "both legitimate and heinous" used them as a base currency.

What changed and what didn't

The rule covered keys and nothing else. Cases and the skins that come out of them kept trading and selling, which is the freedom Valve defended against New York in 2026.

How traders and the press took it

Headlines framed it as a story about money laundering, from Rock Paper Shotgun's on 29 October to The Guardian's the next day. In November The Economist called Valve's statement "a rare admission of the growing problem of using video games to facilitate financial crime".

Traders took it calmly. Polygon found little concern on the CS:GO trading subreddit, where users noted that plenty of tradable keys were still around and that there were other items to trade, such as Dota 2's Arcanas. Rock Paper Shotgun read Reddit the same way: people expected traders to move to Dota 2 Arcanas or Team Fortress 2 keys, and seemed to see the change as necessary, even expected.

The key change wasn't Valve's first move against misuse of Steam trading. In 2016 it sent cease-and-desist notices to gambling sites using Steam's trading system, and in 2018 it made traded items wait seven days to stop services that ran automated Steam accounts; Valve's 2018 trade cooldown tells that story. The history of CS:GO gambling puts all three in order with the rest.

Where the rule stands in CS2

Almost seven years on, the rule hasn't changed. Liquipedia lists keys as bought from the in-game store at a fixed $2.49 and neither tradable nor marketable since 28 October 2019, while older "legacy" keys remain tradable and marketable. New York's complaint against Valve, filed on 25 February 2026, puts most keys at $2.49 plus sales tax, $0.22 in New York, for a total of $2.71.

The complaint also sets Counter-Strike apart from Valve's other games. Keys for Team Fortress 2 boxes can be bought from other users on the Steam Community Market, "unlike the keys in Counter-Strike", and Dota 2 keys can be bought and sold there as well.

Valve's statement to its New York customers, dated 11 March 2026, defended trading in general. It said the attorney general "seems to believe boxes and their contents should not be transferable" and called transferability a right it refuses to take away. It also said it had locked over a million Steam accounts misused by third parties for gambling, fraud and theft, and had shipped features "like trade reversal and trade cooldown" to discourage gambling sites and protect users from fraud.

Trade reversal is part of Trade Protection, which Valve announced in July 2025 and which, the complaint says, only CS2 supports so far; Steam trade protection and skin deposits explains how it works. The statement doesn't mention keys at all: the boxes and items Valve defends can change hands, while the keys it sells have stayed with their buyers since 2019.

What it means when you buy a key

A key bought today has one use: opening a case in the account that bought it. It can't be sold on the Market, given to a friend or traded for something else. Keys bought before 28 October 2019 are the exception: they can still change hands.

What a key buys is a random draw. CS2 case odds covers the published drop rates, and New York's complaint alleges that nearly every buyer who opens a case today gets a common item worth less than the key, which is a claim in a lawsuit, not a court's finding.

At a casino, the cost of a random result has a name: the house edge, the share of each bet the house keeps on average. Every game on cs2.casino shows its house edge and bet limits, and over time the house wins; account limits can cap deposits, losses and wagers over a day, a week or a month.

Sources

• Key Change — Counter-Strike blog
• Counter-Strike trading found to be 'nearly all' money laundering — The Guardian
• Financial crime through video games is on the rise — The Economist
• Valve block Counter-Strike loot key reselling to fight money laundering — Rock Paper Shotgun
• Valve bans CS:GO key trading to stop 'worldwide fraud networks' — Polygon
• Counter-Strike Weapon Cases — Liquipedia Counter-Strike Wiki
• Complaint, People of the State of New York v. Valve Corporation — New York Attorney General
• About the New York Attorney General lawsuit against Valve — Steam Support