UpdatesOct 10, 20265 min readCS2Sell

CS2 Sticker Slab update (November 2025): stickers as charms, untradable Name Tags and Swap Tools

Valve's November 12, 2025 update added the Sticker Slab, a charm that seals any sticker, and made newly bought Name Tags and StatTrak Swap Tools untradable.

On November 12, 2025, Valve opened the StarLadder Budapest Major hub in Counter-Strike 2, and the same update added a new Store item: the Sticker Slab, a charm that seals any sticker so you can hang it on a gun without using it up. The release notes also made newly purchased Name Tags and StatTrak Swap Tools impossible to trade or sell on the Community Market. Eight days earlier, Valve had shipped TrueView, a new way of playing back demos.

What the update added

Area	Change
Store	New Sticker Slab item
Store	Newly purchased Name Tags and StatTrak Swap Tools can't be traded or listed on the Community Market
Major	StarLadder Budapest Major hub, Viewer Pass, upgradable coin and Pick'Em
Gameplay	Higher sv_maxvelocity cap; fixes for mispredicted jumps
Steam	Market and web inventory colours now match item quality colours

How the Sticker Slab works

Valve's notes describe it as "a charm that seals any sticker and can be attached to weapons", with the sticker returned "to your inventory at any time by cracking open and discarding the slab". In the announcement it put the idea more simply: Sticker Slabs let you "show off a sticker with no commitment".

Step by step:

Buy an empty slab from the in-game Store.
Seal a sticker. Select a sticker in your inventory and choose to seal it in a slab. Hotspawn's guide walks through the menu option.
Attach it like a charm. The sealed slab hangs on a weapon the same way as any other charm, so the usual rules apply: one charm per gun, and taking it off a gun needs a Charm Detachment. Our charms guide covers those rules.
Crack it open when you want the sticker back. The sticker returns to your inventory and the slab is discarded. Hotspawn points out that each slab is single-use, so sealing the sticker again means buying another one.

A sealed slab is an item of its own, named after the sticker inside it, such as Sticker Slab | Crown (Foil). Sealed slabs are listed on the Steam Community Market under those names, separately from the plain stickers.

Slab items as they appear in the game's item data, each named after the sticker sealed inside

What it changes for collectors

Before slabs, the only way to show a sticker in game was to apply it, and an applied sticker can never go back to your inventory. A slab removes that trade-off:

Expensive stickers can be displayed without being used up. That matters most for old tournament stickers, where every application permanently shrinks the unapplied supply.
A sixth design on one gun. A weapon takes five stickers, and a slab adds one more as its charm.
Only inventory stickers. A sticker already applied to a weapon can't be moved into a slab; it stays where it is.

Rare stickers like these can now be shown on a gun and still returned to the inventory

When a listing shows a sticker, check whether it is applied or slabbed. Our stickers guide covers finishes and scraping, and sticker crafts covers how applied stickers are valued.

Name Tags and StatTrak Swap Tools no longer tradable

The second Store change was a single line: "Newly purchased Name Tag and StatTrak™ Swap Tool items can no longer be traded or listed on Community Market." Valve gave no reason in its notes.

The practical effect is simple. If you buy one of these tools from the Store now, it can only be used on your own account, so buy it when you are ready to rename a gun or move a StatTrak count, not to resell. The note applies to newly purchased copies. Our guide to Name Tags, Storage Units and other tools explains what each tool does.

The Budapest Major

The update opened the StarLadder Budapest Major hub, with a Viewer Pass that includes an upgradable Budapest 2025 Coin, the Pick'Em Challenge, team and player stickers, and Souvenir Charms with match highlights on playoff Souvenirs. Valve also noted that the grand final would be best of five for the first time at a Major. The full event and its stickers are covered in our Budapest 2025 Major article.

Other changes

The maximum effective sv_maxvelocity rose to 16,384 units per second; the default of 3,500 is unchanged.
Two fixes for clients mispredicting jump presses and jump apexes.
Inferno's skybox no longer blocks grenades.
Bullet decals render further away by default.
Gloves in the inventory now use Animgraph2, matching first-person gloves in game.
The C4 view model now has a pulsing light.
Counter-Strike items on the Steam Community Market and in web inventories now use colour schemes that match item quality colours.

The next day's patch fixed a rendering bug on transparent charms attached to a planted C4 or dropped weapons, a case where the Budapest 2025 Coin didn't appear on the scoreboard, and updated the Imperial Esports Budapest sticker artwork.

TrueView, the week before

On November 4, 2025, Valve added TrueView to demo playback. Before it, demos showed the server's view of the world without accounting for network latency, so shots could hit that didn't look like they should, and the other way round. TrueView re-runs the observed player's client-side prediction so playback matches what that player saw much more closely, including Damage Prediction if they had it enabled. It is switched off by default when the game version doesn't match the one the demo was recorded on, and Valve said some differences remain, especially in slow motion. On November 19 it was disabled for live playcasts.

Where it stands now

Valve's notes since then haven't changed or removed the Sticker Slab, and the tradability change for Name Tags and Swap Tools still stands. The previous update covered here is the Covert trade-up update of October 2025; the next is Premier Season Four in January 2026.