Gamer spends $500,000 real human money on Counter Strike AK-47 skin and knife

What would you spend half a million dollars on? A house deposit? A boat? A fancy luxury car? A skin for your digital gun in a video game?

Well, one gamer who apparently has too much money ignored all of the former options and opted for the latter.

Yep, the anonymous Counter-Strike: Global Offensive player dropped a cool USD$500,000 (£403,825, AUD$744,546) on a bundle deal that included a rank one AK-47 ‘661’ pattern ST MW with 4x Titan Holos and a Karambit ‘387’ pattern blue gem in the 'well worn' condition.

Translation: a digital gun and a digital knife for use in the game.

Oh, and if you weren't aware, a skin is basically the pattern or aesthetic of something in a game.

Sort of like the cover you choose for your mobile phone, except in a video game.

Anyway, the 'gun' set the player back USD$400,000 (£323,060, AUD$595,636) and the knife was an additional USD$100,000 (£80,765, AUD$148,909).

For those of you out there who are familiar with Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skins, it is the same knife as the Karambit, which is known around town as the most expensive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin in existence.

The only difference is the condition of the item.

The USD$100,000 knife is in a 'well worn' condition, rather than the 'factory new' condition with the USD$1.5 million (£1,211,475, AUD$2,233,638) price tag.

Prominent Counter-Strike: Global Offensive skin trader ‘zipeL’ acted as the broker in the exchange.

He took to Twitter to alert his followers and fellow gamers that he had helped secure the second-largest trade deal in the history of the game.

He tweeted: "I just completed the second largest trade in Counter-Strike history! Sold these two on behalf of [fellow player] Luksusbums."

"The combined sale was [over] USD$500,000."

The identity of the player who bought the skins is unknown, but some gaming sites like Dextero seem to believe it may be a Chinese collector who also owns a Souvenir AWP Dragon Lore skin worth over USD$100,000.

So why was a fake weapon so damned expensive? Well, not only is it one of the rarest skins in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, but it also features one of the most coveted sticker combinations in the entire game.

The digital AK-47 features a 661 pattern, which means it boasts a 'rank one' blue gem pattern.

So, basically, it has the most blue in it.

It was also covered in four Titan Holo stickers from the Katowice 2014 collection.

Yep. We can hear you ooh-ing and ahh-ing from here.

Since Counter-Strike's Arms Deal update back in August 2013, weapon skins have become a key part of the experience of the game.

They are purely for aesthetics and provide no competitive or tactical advantage for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players.

But, as we've now seen, the rare ones are considered collector's items.

And gamers are willing to pay top-dollar for them.

After all, why buy a house - something tangible that could appreciate in value - when you could buy a little bit of specific code for use only on a certain video game?

We know what we'd choose.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive 2 will be released in 'summer 2023' as per The LoadOut. The game will be a free upgrade for all owners of the previous version.