UpdatesOct 10, 20265 min readCS2Sell

CS2 Fire Sale update (May 2024): weapon rentals, a cheaper M4A4 and the incendiary rework

The May 23, 2024 Fire Sale update let players rent the Kilowatt Collection for a week, cut M4A4 and incendiary prices and rebuilt Vertigo's A site. Rental rules and the later expansion.

On May 23, 2024, Valve released "Fire Sale", an update aimed at the Counter-Terrorist economy. It cut the price of the M4A4 and the incendiary grenade, gave Terrorists less money when their planted bomb is defused, reworked the incendiary itself and rebuilt Vertigo's A site. It also introduced weapon rentals: opening a Kilowatt Case could now get you the whole collection for a week instead of one skin. In November 2024 Valve extended rentals to every older CS:GO weapon case.

What the update changed

Change	Before	After
M4A4 price	$3,100	$3,000
Incendiary grenade price	$600	$500
Terrorist award when the planted bomb is defused	$800	$600
Incendiary duration and flame spread	—	Reduced
Vertigo A site	—	New catwalk and routes; now the Wingman site
Kilowatt Case	Open to keep one skin	Option to rent the whole collection for a week

Weapon rentals

Valve's post addressed "Kilowatt Collection fans" directly. The rules in the release notes are short:

When you open a Kilowatt Case with a key, you can choose to rent the entire Kilowatt Collection for a week instead of receiving one item. That means every weapon in the case, but not the rare special item, so the Kukri Knife isn't included.
You can use the rented weapons as much as you like during that week.
Rented weapons can't be modified with stickers or name tags, and they can't be traded or sold on the Steam Community Market.
When the rental ends, any rented weapon you have equipped is replaced with the stock version.

In practice, a rental uses up a case and a key exactly like a normal opening. The difference is the result: instead of one random skin that you keep, you get all 17 Kilowatt finishes in your loadout for seven days and nothing to keep afterwards. It suits players who want to try the whole set, or who care more about using the skins than owning one. Because a rented weapon can't be traded or sold, a rental also adds no new skin to the market. The full list of finishes is in our Kilowatt Case article.

Kilowatt finishes that players could rent for a week instead of unboxing a single skin

Rentals for every CS:GO case

On November 27, 2024, the patch that opened the Shanghai Major hub carried a one-line change: "Added ability to rent weapons from all previous CS:GO weapon cases." From then on, the rent option also appeared for older cases, so a case from years ago could be opened for a week's use of its whole collection instead of one item to keep. The May rules were written for rented weapons in general: no stickers or name tags, no trading and no selling.

Older CS:GO cases like these became rentable in November 2024

Valve's notes still referred to rental items in September 2025, when a patch let players use the "Unfavorite for CT" loadout action on trade-protected and rental items.

Help for the CT economy

Valve summed up the economy changes as "some love for the CT economy". The M4A4 dropped from $3,100 to $3,000 and the incendiary grenade from $600 to $500. On the other side, the Terrorists' team award when they plant the bomb and the CTs defuse it fell from $800 to $600. Valve said the aim was "to decrease the impact of the first-round on subsequent rounds". Terrorists who plant in the pistol round but lose it now have less money for the next buy.

HLTV called the price cuts a direct boost to the CT side, but noted that the incendiary changes offset some of it. In HLTV's round-up of reactions, many people saw the shift towards the CT side in the early-game economy as a step in the right direction, and some pointed out that utility-heavy maps such as Inferno would need even more grenades to secure Banana.

The incendiary rework

The CT incendiary grenade got a new look and a smaller footprint:

New visual treatment for the explosion and flames
Shorter duration
Smaller area covered by spreading flames
Price cut from $600 to $500

For both the incendiary and the Terrorists' Molotov, the height of the pillar of flame now shrinks over time. The result is a cheaper CT grenade that covers less ground for less time.

Vertigo's A site

Vertigo's A site was rebuilt, and Valve made it the site used in Wingman. The changes:

A new catwalk beside bombsite A, connecting to the back of A
The connector between the back of A and the elevators removed
The passage between the elevators and the scaffolding opened up
The size of bombsite A slightly changed, and spawn timings tweaked

HLTV said the changes were meant to address the map's repetitiveness and drew mixed reactions. A follow-up patch the next day blocked grenades from passing through the crane base at A.

Other changes

Demos: the playback timeline marks kills and deaths, and a "highlight mode" shows only the active player's kills and deaths.
Deathmatch: bonus weapons are the same for every player, regardless of loadout.
Privacy: blocking strangers' Steam avatars now also hides other user-made content, such as name tags and sticker placements.
Chickens: new animations, the ability to walk up hills and to turn right while walking.
Finishes: on May 24 Valve fixed the appearance of Doppler, Gamma Doppler and Marble Fade finishes. Our Doppler phases guide explains how those finishes vary.
Graphics: a separate patch the day before added support for AMD Anti-Lag 2.

Where it stands now

The M4A4 got cheaper again in January 2025, dropping to $2,900 at the start of Premier Season Two, and Vertigo left the Active Duty pool in the same update when Train came in. Both changes are covered in our Season Two article. The Kilowatt Case is still listed in the active weekly drop pool by community trackers as of October 2026, as our drop pool guide explains. The update before this one, in April 2024, brought back Dust II and left-handed viewmodels, covered in our April 2024 article.