The 5 ugliest skins in all of CS2

While the debate over the prettiest CS2 skin will likely go on forever, few stop to consider the ugliest. With well over a thousand options for dozens of different weapons, there’s bound to be a few stinkers floating around the Steam Market. If you’re interested in picking up a terrible-looking skin or just want to gawk, these five skins will leave you wondering what their designers were thinking.

Note that we’re only considering skins in their best possible condition. Anyone can point to a torn-up M249 | Gator Mesh and call it ugly, but its “rustic charm” is likely intended by Valve. Without further ado, these are the five ugliest skins you can possibly buy in CS2.

Ah, the Copperhead. When it comes to the ugliest CS2 skins, this one is an all-star. It has literally nothing going for it. It’s a gross skin from the Dust Collection, one of the worst map skin packs. It has a simple hydrographic design that blends into the floor of most maps. The AUG has been out of meta for years and shows no signs of returning. Worst of all, it has an extremely low float cap at the lower end of Minimal Wear. There’s literally a rule in the game that it can’t look good.

The most a Copperhead can ever look forward to is being traded up into a Desert Eagle | Blaze. The cherry on top? A clean example will run you $114. Well, as clean as one can be, anyway.

The 2021 Vertigo Collection brought some dope skins to the game, and the Red Tire is certainly not one of them. The Red Tire is supposed to invoke a motorsport aesthetic, but it completely fails on just about every metric. The tread pattern is practically invisible due to the all-black palette while red lines and whitewall barely stand out. There are also snowflakes on it? For some reason? 

It’s just a random mish-mash of textures with no rhyme or reason. A potential trade-up for a AK-47 | Green Laminate is the only reason it can fetch $5. Just pay $1.60 for a clean souvenir and scrape the stickers if you really want to downgrade your T pistol rounds that bad.

Okay, hear us out. We know the Nightwish is a hot take as one of the ugliest CS2 skins, but we can explain. In your head, without looking at the photo below, what does the Nightwish look like? What’s on it? Can you even remember the color palette? Of course you can’t. Nobody can. All people remember about the Nightwish is a swirling palette of rave colors strewn haphazardly with the grace of a bowling ball falling down a staircase.

And it's $85 for Factory New. That’s a small price to pay for a skin that doubles as an anti-mnemonic device. Maybe it’ll go up when Valve adds glow-in-the-dark support for Counter-Strike 3.

The entire CS20 Case deserves a spot on this list, but the FAMAS | Commemoration will take the fall as its sole representative. There's already something off about a game trying to pay tribute to itself in the form of funky gun skins, but the Commemoration pushes things just a little too far. From an awkwardly organized list of maps on the stock to a group photo in the middle, this skin takes one of the ugliest guns in CS2 and makes it even worse.

Ultimately, it's a skin for those who really, really want a Gold Arabesque, but can't afford it. And are on CT side. And need to force buy. That'll be $20, please.

No list of the ugliest CS2 skins would be complete without a knife, and oh boy, do the Shadow Daggers | Freehand deliver. This finish looks great on larger knives with the space to show off the intricate graffiti-esque pattern. But on the daggers? It looks like a jumbled mess. It seems like Valve just shrunk the pattern to make it fit without testing it at all. The result is both the number one and number two trashiest knives in the game.

Unsurprisingly, this is one of the cheapest knives in the game at only $140 for a pair in top condition. That’s about all you can expect from a knife where Factory New looks Battle-scarred.

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