CS2 Float Values Explained: The Math Behind Wear, Distribution, and Pricing

Every Counter-Strike 2 weapon finish carries a hidden 32-bit floating-point number between 0.00 and 1.00 that defines how worn the skin appears in-game. This single value — the float — determines the visible exterior tier (Factory New through Battle-Scarred), the in-game scratch and abrasion pattern, and ultimately the market price. Despite its simplicity, the way Valve generates and constrains this number produces a supply curve that is anything but uniform, and understanding the math is the difference between guessing a skin's value and pricing it correctly.

How CS2 generates a float value

When a case opens, the game server selects a finish from the case's loot pool, then rolls a float value within that finish's allowed wear range. The roll is the result of a uniform random draw on the interval [0, 1] that is then linearly mapped onto the skin's specific minimum and maximum wear bounds. The general formula is straightforward.

Most skins use the full range (`wear_min = 0`, `wear_max = 1`), but a meaningful minority of finishes are restricted. The AK-47 Case Hardened, for example, has `wear_min = 0` and `wear_max = 0.75`, meaning a Battle-Scarred Case Hardened cannot exceed 0.75 in float. This restriction is why some skins have no Battle-Scarred or Well-Worn variants in circulation — the upper bound stops short of those tiers.

Exterior tier thresholds

Once the float is generated, it is bucketed into one of five exterior tiers using fixed cut-points that have been unchanged since CS:GO's 2013 introduction of skin wear:

The asymmetry of these widths is the single most important fact in the entire CS2 economy. Field-Tested occupies 23% of the float space — more than three times the width of Factory New or Well-Worn — and Battle-Scarred occupies 55%. Because most skins draw uniformly across the full [0, 1] range, this directly translates into supply.

Why Field-Tested dominates supply

For an unrestricted-range skin, the probability of rolling each tier equals that tier's float-space width. We can express the expected supply ratio for a hypothetical 1,000,000 unboxings of a full-range skin as follows:

This is the textbook explanation for why Factory New skins command a premium — they account for only 7% of theoretical supply on full-range items, and even less in practice because StatTrak rolls and operation drops introduce additional weighting that we examine in the StatTrak premium analysis. The 7-to-55 ratio between Factory New and Battle-Scarred sets a hard floor on how much price compression can occur between the two tiers.

Float-to-price elasticity inside a tier

Two skins can both be Factory New but trade at very different prices. The reason is that lower floats inside a tier are still worth more, often substantially. The market segments roughly into three intra-tier zones for high-value items.

1. Tier-edge floats — values within ~5% of the lower boundary of the tier. A 0.001 Factory New AK-47 Vulcan is meaningfully more valuable than a 0.065 Factory New of the same skin, because some buyers specifically seek the lowest possible float in a tier.
2. Tier-mid floats — the bulk of the in-tier distribution. Pricing here is essentially flat across most of the range; small float differences within this band rarely move price more than a few percent.
3. Tier-edge upper floats — values within ~5% of the upper boundary. These often trade at a small discount because the visible wear is approaching the next tier's appearance.

The 'tradeable' wear illusion

A persistent misconception is that the wear shown on a skin in-game changes based on the float value's position within its tier. In CS2, the visible wear is a continuous function of the float, not the tier. A 0.069 Factory New and a 0.071 Minimal Wear are visually almost identical; the tier label is a marketplace abstraction, not a rendering threshold. This is why some traders deliberately seek 'high-tier-low-float' skins (like a 0.150x Field-Tested) — they look near-Minimal-Wear but trade at Field-Tested prices.

Float compression in StatTrak and Souvenir variants

StatTrak rolls do not change the float distribution mechanics — a StatTrak-eligible drop simply has an additional ~10% probability of being StatTrak, but the float roll is independent. Souvenir packages, however, inherit the wear constraints of the originating Major souvenir item and tend to skew toward higher-float exteriors due to weighted selection across the Major map collections. A souvenir AWP Dragon Lore in Factory New is therefore exponentially rarer than a normal AWP Dragon Lore in Factory New, and this scarcity compounds with the float-tier distribution to produce some of the highest unit values in the entire CS2 economy.

Practical takeaways

• Always check the wear range before assuming tier distributions. Restricted-range skins break the standard 7/8/23/7/55 split.
• Sub-0.001 floats carry a measurable premium on collectibles — verify with comparable sales rather than tier averages.
• Tier-edge low floats are the most liquid form of premium; tier-edge high floats often trade at discount to their tier median.
• The price gap between Factory New and Battle-Scarred is anchored by structural rarity, not aesthetics — a 7.86× supply ratio is the long-run baseline.

Float values look simple from the outside — a number between zero and one — but the way that number is sampled, bucketed, and priced by the market creates a layered economy where tier, tier position, range restriction, and rarity tag all multiply against each other. The skins that command the highest prices in CS2 are the ones where every layer compounds in the buyer's favor.