CS2 case farming glossary.
Plain-language definitions for the terms you will run into when reading about CS2 case farming. We use these terms throughout the site and the setup guide. Definitions are written for someone who plays CS2 but is new to multi-account farming and Hyper-V.
Walkbot
A walkbot is software that moves a player avatar around a CS2 map without human input. In case farming, the walkbot keeps the account "playing" so the game registers minutes-played time, which is the trigger for weekly drops and rank rewards. A good walkbot uses real walkable paths and human-like timing so the account does not look like a script. The MonkePanel walkbot is described on the walkbot section of the home page.
Weekly drop / care package
Each Steam account that owns Counter-Strike 2 receives one weapon case or graffiti per week, drawn from an active pool that Valve refreshes periodically. The drop is granted after a few hours of playtime in any matchmaking mode and is tradeable after the standard trade hold. The "active drop pool" is the set of cases currently eligible to drop; older cases rotate out and become rare cases, which historically dropped much less often and were removed from the pool entirely in January 2026.
Prime Status
Prime Status is a paid Steam upgrade that unlocks Premier-mode matchmaking, exclusive item drops, and weapon cases. As of 2024, weekly case drops require Prime. Prime accounts are the unit of currency in a CS2 farm: the more Prime accounts you can run safely in parallel, the more cases your farm produces per week.
Trust Factor
Trust Factor is Valve's internal reputation score for each Steam account. It feeds matchmaking (low-trust accounts get matched with other low-trust accounts) and influences anti-cheat sensitivity. Farm accounts that idle in deathmatch servers, have no other game library, and play only from VMs tend to land in low-trust ranges. The score itself is not exposed to users; it is inferred from match quality and behavior signals.
Trade hold / trade protection
A waiting period Steam enforces before a traded item can leave the receiving account. New items dropped by an account cannot be traded for seven days. Trades between accounts that have not historically traded with each other can also be held for fifteen days. Trade hold matters for farms because it sets the floor on how quickly cases can be moved from farm accounts to a single cash-out account.
Steam Guard
Steam Guard is the two-factor authentication system that protects Steam logins. The mobile authenticator generates a five-character code every thirty seconds. For multi-account farms, the codes are exported once as maFiles, which a farm panel can read so the panel signs in without prompting for a code each time.
maFiles
maFiles are JSON files containing the secret keys that drive a Steam account's Steam Guard mobile authenticator. The format originated with the Steam Mobile Authenticator app. With a maFile, a panel like MonkePanel can compute Steam Guard codes itself and complete login without human input.
VAC ban
Valve Anti-Cheat is Valve's automated anti-cheat system. A VAC ban on an account is permanent, blocks the account from VAC-protected servers (including all CS2 matchmaking), and removes the ability to trade items off that account. VAC bans typically come in waves and are detected from cheat signatures rather than from gameplay behavior. Pure farming (no cheats injected into CS2) generally does not draw VAC bans; non-VAC bans are the more relevant farming risk.
Game / overwatch / community bans
Three other ban categories sit alongside VAC. Game bans are issued by Valve based on Overwatch reports (other players flagging an account) or backend detection of automation. Community bans block Steam community features. Both can result from being reported repeatedly for inactivity or scripted behavior in deathmatch, which is the typical farm-account ban path.
Hardware fingerprint
The combination of CPU model, motherboard ID, MAC address, disk serial, GPU device ID, and other signals that uniquely identify a physical machine. Steam reads several of these at login. Running multiple Steam accounts from the same fingerprint is a strong cluster signal. Per-account hardware isolation in a VM gives each account a distinct fingerprint, which is the foundation of multi-account farming.
GPU passthrough
The general term for giving a virtual machine direct access to a physical GPU. CS2 does not run well on the synthetic graphics adapter Hyper-V exposes by default; passthrough is required for usable frame rates. Hyper-V offers two forms of passthrough: DDA (one full GPU per VM) and GPU-P partitioning (one GPU shared across host plus several VMs). Most farms use GPU-P.
GPU partitioning (GPU-P)
Hyper-V's GPU partitioning interface lets a single physical GPU be split into multiple virtual partitions, each assigned to a VM. The host retains a partition for itself. Compute, encode, and decode resources are shared on a time-slice basis. GPU-P works on most modern NVIDIA RTX and AMD RX cards and is the right choice for multi-VM farms because one card can drive several CS2 instances. Setup is covered in the setup guide.
Discrete Device Assignment (DDA)
The other Hyper-V GPU passthrough mode. DDA hands an entire physical GPU exclusively to one VM. The host loses access to it for the duration. DDA gives the best in-VM performance but is wasteful for farming (one GPU per VM is not cost-effective). For multi-VM farming, GPU-P is preferred.
Hyper-V
Microsoft's Type-1 hypervisor that ships with Windows 10/11 Pro, Enterprise, and Education editions. It runs as a kernel-level component, not as an application on top of Windows, which is what makes its VMs perform well enough to host CS2. Hyper-V is not available in Windows Home. Enabling it requires CPU virtualization extensions (Intel VT-x / AMD-V) and IOMMU (Intel VT-d / AMD-Vi) in BIOS. Full setup is in the setup guide.
Easy-GPU-PV
A community PowerShell tool that automates Hyper-V GPU partitioning. It creates the VM, mounts your Windows ISO, copies the host's GPU driver files into the VM, and assigns a GPU partition, all in a single run. It is a faster path than the manual steps in our guide. The tool lives at github.com/jamesstringer90/Easy-GPU-PV.
Deathmatch
A casual CS2 mode where players respawn continuously and accumulate kills against the whole lobby. Round structure is replaced by a ten-minute timer. Deathmatch is the most common farming venue because the round-end and team-balancing logic is loose, average kills per session counts toward the playtime requirements for weekly drops, and walkbot detection signals are softer than in competitive modes.
Practice mode
A single-player offline mode against bots where players warm up. Practice mode contributes to total playtime but is monitored separately by Steam for drop eligibility. Drop logic was reworked in late 2024 to require some online matchmaking time alongside practice, so farming pure-practice no longer produces drops.
Active drop pool
The set of weapon cases currently eligible to drop in the weekly drop or care package. Valve rotates the pool every few months. In 2026 the pool consists primarily of newer cases (Kilowatt, Revolution, Dreams & Nightmares, plus the latest Sealed Cases). Older cases that left the pool are no longer obtainable from drops and historically rise in market value as supply tightens.
Armory Pass
A purchasable seasonal pass that converts XP into stars, which players spend on rotating armory items (skins, stickers, charms, agents). Armory farming sits adjacent to case farming because the same playtime that drives weekly drops also produces XP for stars. Some players run hybrid farms targeting both at once.
Souvenir crafting / trade-up contracts
The 5-skin trade-up contract lets you combine five same-grade skins to roll one skin of the next grade up. Covert and knife trade-ups (introduced October 2025) opened new craft paths where covert-grade inputs can produce knife outputs. The economics of trade-up crafting are now a secondary revenue stream alongside raw case drops; farms with large covert inventories may net more from crafting than from selling cases.
Storage account
A Steam account that does not farm itself but exists to receive cases and skins from a fleet of farm accounts. Farms typically maintain one or two clean, high-trust storage accounts. Cases land on the storage account after the 7-day trade hold, where they accumulate before being sold or held as inventory. Concentrating value on a storage account is a risk concentration choice. Losing it loses the inventory. A tradeoff worth thinking about explicitly.
CS:GO to CS2 transition
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) was replaced by Counter-Strike 2 (CS2) on 27 September 2023. The transition kept the same Steam appID (730) and the same inventory, so every skin, case, and account carried forward intact. Older guides and forum threads still call the game "CS:GO" or "CSGO" out of habit; the modern term is "CS2". Drop mechanics, ranking, and Trust Factor all carried forward conceptually, though the specific values and rates have shifted since 2023. When you read CS:GO case farming content from 2022 or earlier, treat it as the same problem with different numbers.