Most of the skin market is about guns. Agents are the one item type that changes the player instead. Equip one and your character model on T or CT side is replaced by that agent, visible to everyone in the server. Here is what they are, where they came from and how they price.
What an agent is
An agent is a full character model with its own outfit and face, often its own voice lines, and a faction name in the item title. Cmdr. Mae “Dead Cold” Jamison belongs to SWAT. Sir Bloody Miami Darryl belongs to The Professionals. The faction decides which side the agent plays on. SWAT, FBI, SEAL and Gendarmerie agents are CT. The Professionals, Phoenix, Elite Crew, Sabre and Guerrilla Warfare agents are T.
Your loadout has one agent slot per side. An agent cannot cross over, so a T agent is only ever seen on T rounds.
Agents are ordinary Steam items. They can be traded, listed on the Community Market and sent in a trade offer like a skin. They carry the same 7-day trade cooldown after arriving in an inventory.
Where they came from
Agents were introduced with Operation Shattered Web and returned in the two operations after it. Each operation had its own roster, earned with the operation’s reward stars.
| Operation | Examples |
|---|---|
| Shattered Web | Special Agent Ava, “The Doctor” Romanov, Bloody Darryl The Strapped |
| Broken Fang | Cmdr. Mae “Dead Cold” Jamison, Sir Bloody Miami Darryl, Number K |
| Riptide | Chem-Haz Capitaine, Vypa Sista of the Revolution, Cmdr. Frank “Wet Sox” Baroud |
Operations run for a limited time. When one ends, its reward track closes and no more of its agents are created. Every agent on the market today was earned by someone during its operation or has been passed along since. That is the whole supply.
The rarity scale for agents has four tiers: Distinguished, Exceptional, Superior and Master. Master is the top, and Master agents price highest within their operation.
No float, no exterior
A skin has a float, a wear rating and a pattern index. An agent has none of that. There is no exterior in the name, no inspect number to compare, no scratches on a worn copy. Two copies of the same agent are identical in every way that shows on screen.
This makes agents the simplest item in the game to buy. The name is the entire description. You do not check a render, you do not compare floats, you do not hunt for a pattern. You find the agent, you look at the price, you decide.
There is no StatTrak agent and no Souvenir agent either.
Patches
Patches are the agent version of stickers. They came in with the same operation as agents and stick onto the model’s outfit. A patched agent shows the patch in game, and a patch travels with the agent when it is traded.
They rarely move the agent’s price. The patch market is small, and most buyers would rather choose their own. If you are paying extra for a patched agent, know what that patch sells for on its own before you agree.
How agents price
With no wear to argue about, an agent’s price comes down to a short list.
- Tier. Master above Superior above Exceptional above Distinguished, with a wide gap at the top.
- Side. Players tend to have a favorite side to dress up. Demand is not equal, and the same tier on the other side can cost noticeably less.
- Look. A model with a distinctive outfit or a memorable voice pulls buyers. Sir Bloody Miami Darryl is the obvious example. A plain uniform does not.
- Visibility. Some agents blend into some maps. Competitive players notice, and a model that is hard to see on a popular map gets bought for that reason, and argued about for the same reason.
- Supply. A tier that few people bothered to unlock during its operation is scarcer now than a tier everyone finished.
Because supply is closed and every copy is identical, agent prices tend to move slowly. There are no low floats to chase and no new cases to open. What moves them is interest in the model itself.
Buying one
- Decide which side you want to dress first. Most players buy for the side they play more.
- Look at the model in game or in a video, in first person and third person. You will see the arms and hands more than anything else.
- Check the tier. It tells you where the price should sit relative to the rest of the roster.
- Ignore anything about wear. There is none.
On PrefireSkins an agent listing shows the name and the price in EUR, and that is all it needs to show, because there is no exterior and no float to add. Delivery is the same as for any skin: a trade offer to the trade URL you enter at checkout.
An agent is the one CS2 item where the name tells you everything. If the name matches, the copy matches.
