Editorial policy

One rule governs everything published here: if we cannot verify it, we do not show it. This page explains how that rule is applied, where it came from, and what to do when we get something wrong.

Built through years of private research

The source rules predate the public site. Since 2015, the team has built Counter-Strike item and market datasets; for years, the catalog and analytics workspace was private and invitation-only. CS2.IO applies the same rule in public: every number, date, and claim needs a named source or reproducible calculation.

  • The public platform launched with the CS2 item database, price comparison, history and practical tools. Old news and article copy was not republished to pad the archive.
  • The pricing pipeline publishes provider data through documented fee and currency formulas; it does not invent missing prices or silently adjust a venue’s position.
  • Marketplace fees, payment rails, KYC rules and statuses require a primary source or an explicit absence rather than an estimate.
  • Freshness labels were switched from build dates to data-capture timestamps, with visible staleness warnings.
  • Outbound marketplace controls resolve directly to each venue’s listing without CS2.IO referral parameters; destinations are kept out of crawlable markup to limit automated scraping.

These checks predate the public site. New pages and data sources must meet the same standard.

Sourcing

  • Item facts (names, wear ranges, rarities, odds, contents) come from the CS2 game files and Valve’s official localization files.
  • Prices come from our licensed market-data provider and are published with capture timestamps, as documented in the pricing methodology.
  • Marketplace facts come from each platform’s own documentation and are periodically re-verified (last pass: July 1, 2026).
  • News and guides cite primary sources: Valve announcements, official patch notes, platform statements. No claim ships on rumor alone.
  • We make no expertise claims we cannot show the work for. "We analyzed N" appears only with the analysis linked.

AI assistance

We use AI tools for drafts, translation, and maintenance. A person reviews the result before publication. Prices, dates, reviews, events, and statistics must come from our datasets or named sources. If the source has no fact, we publish no fact.

Corrections

  • Report errors to corrections@cs2.io. Include the URL, disputed value, time seen and a primary source when available.
  • Data errors (a wrong fee, a stale status, a mismatched price) are fixed at the source dataset, so the correction propagates to every page and language at once.
  • Substantive corrections to editorial claims are acknowledged on the page rather than silently rewritten.

Update cadence

  • Prices update per snapshot; the capture time and staleness state are visible next to every table.
  • Marketplace facts are re-verified in scheduled passes, with the verification date printed on each dossier.
  • Guides and explainers carry their dates and are revised when game mechanics change, not on a cosmetic schedule.

Language policy

The skins catalog can render item terminology across 28 languages using Valve’s official localization files. Free-form policies, guides and editorial pages use separate reviewed copy and therefore have narrower locale clusters; a route is added to a cluster only when its copy is ready for publication.

Safety boundaries

  • No gambling promotion. Case-odds content is consumer information: we show the odds and the expected loss, never "how to profit from opening".
  • Payment-rail availability is described as dated fact ("works / does not work as of {date}"), never as instructions for circumventing restrictions.
  • Skins are not investment advice. We publish market data; decisions and risk are yours.

Related pages