Knife trade-ups and the return of Retakes headline new CS2 update

October 23, 2025 — Valve has shipped a significant Counter-Strike 2 patch that re-introduces the official Retakes playlist and, for the first time in franchise history, expands Trade Up Contracts to produce knives and gloves. The update also includes map touch-ups and stability fixes. 

What’s new

Retakes are back (official playlist). Retakes now appear in matchmaking, supporting maps from Defusal Groups Alpha and Delta. Valve announced the mode publicly — “Retakes is back!” — via the official Counter-Strike account alongside a Steam News post. 

Knife/Glove trade-ups. Players can now submit five Covert (red) items in a contract to receive:

5× StatTrak™ Covert → 1× StatTrak™ knife from one of the submitted collections

5× regular Covert → 1× regular knife or 1× regular gloves from one of the submitted collections
These rules are listed in the patch notes mirrored on SteamDB and summarized by multiple outlets. 

Maps & misc. Minor updates landed for community maps (Golden, Palacio, Rooftop) and some visibility/optimization tweaks on Inferno; there are also UI performance improvements and bug fixes. 

Note on marketability: Community trackers and reporters noted soon after release that knives/gloves obtained through the new contracts appeared non-tradable / not listable on the Steam Market at this time. Valve has not issued a separate statement on this behavior in the notes; the observation is based on community testing/screens and Steam forum chatter. (We’ll treat that status as observed behavior, not an official policy change.) 

Why this matters

Extending Trade Up Contracts to the Covert tier → knives/gloves is arguably the biggest structural change to CS skin crafting since the mechanic launched in CS:GO, and it’s already influencing pricing and liquidity for red skins (covert items). Expect short-term volatility as players arbitrage the new inputs across collections. 

What players and community figures are saying

Counter-Strike (official): “Retakes is back!” (with link to the Steam News post).

Ozzny (CS2 reporter/creator) on how it works: “This is how the new Covert → Knife/Gloves Trade-Up works in CS2… you put in 5 coverts, you get a knife or gloves from the case the skins came from…” (thread with screenshots).

Steam Inventory Helper (community utility) summarizing the rules: “You can now trade up five Covert skins for knives or gloves… 5× StatTrak™ Covert = StatTrak™ knife; 5× regular Covert = regular knife or gloves (same collection).

Early community testing on tradability (unofficial): Clips/screens suggest trade-up knives/gloves are not tradable at the moment. Treat as observed behavior, pending any Valve clarification.