To celebrate Counter-Strike’s 20th anniversary, Valve has announced a special workshop event.
It sounds like they’re going to release a weapon skin case and sticker capsule to
commemorate it being 20 years since Counter-Strike’s first beta. The theme is ‘Counter-Strike’-
make of that what you will! All you have to do is to make a skin or sticker, to submit
it to the workshop, and to tag it with ‘CS20’. Older submissions can also be tagged, if deemed
suitable for this theme. On September 19th, Valve will pick from them
and those lucky, talented workshop artists will get their works immortalised in Counter-Strike
forever… as well as a cut of the revenue their artwork generates.
Valve has a number of guides and additional information online for people looking to create
some workshop submissions- see this video’s description for them.
It’s easy to think that the flashiest and coolest looking skins and stickers will be
most likely to get picked, but actually there are far more spots for lower grades. Their
workshop style guide shows it best- in a weapon skin case there will be maybe 2 covert skins
picked, which will have bold, ‘loud’ patterns that can easily be recognised from a distance.
But there may be 7 or 8 of the lowest ‘military spec’ grade.
There’s more to it than that though. Valve encourages you to make a variety of skins
in different grades, or even a particular skin in several different finishes to suit
different rarity tiers. They say that flashy covert skins may make you popular with the
community- and this is the important bit- this popularity generated may in turn attract
Valve to browse through the rest of your workshop. To support this they even say that most military-spec
skins that are picked are discovered after reviewing artists with a broad portfolio-
which obviously means flashier, popular designs. It’s worth reading into these two paragraphs,
as if there’s anywhere that will reveal what Valve is looking for, it’s somewhere
within these. And it’s not as though lower tiered designs
are any worse. They’ll merely have more muted colours and patterns. There’s still
a lot of scope here for skilfully designed skins- they’ll typically look more realistic
or worn than those of rarer grades. And the same idea applies to the sticker capsule.
Unlike the 4 grades of weapon skin, stickers only come in 3 grades. The lowest is ‘High
Grade’, which has a plasticky sheen to it. ‘Remarkable’ is like a rainbow hue, with
a holographic effect on the sticker’s colours. And the highest grade is ‘Exotic’, with
a bump-mapped, 3D looking Foil finish to really give the sticker that premium, embossed look,
with tasteful thickness. Oh my God. It might even have a watermark.
Whether you’re making a weapon skin or sticker, be wary of blood, skulls or violent themes.
Some regions in the world don’t like this, so you’ll either be asked to make a low-violence
edition or you simply won’t be picked at all. It’s probably best just to do what
China wants and to avoid violence completely. Oh and don’t steal other peoples’ work.
It sounds obvious, but when the theme is ‘Counter-Strike’ I imagine that a lot of entries are going
to be somewhat inspired by existing content in the game. Valve has stated that your work
on this must be original, apart from Counter-Strike logos or icons. So you can at least use those!
All of the basic information will be available in Valve’s own guides, linked to in this
video’s description. I’ll link to some skin and sticker-making
tutorials for those who want to participate but who don’t know where to start.
And for advanced ‘inspiration’ and to get a feel for different weapon grades, I
suggest checking out my skin showcase videos, where I interview the skin makers who have
had their designs accepted. They often share tips and bits of wisdom that may help and
inspire new skin makers. I have personally never made a skin or sticker,
but can still give you one bit of advice: don’t get your hopes up. There will be a
LOT of submissions. Even if yours is good enough, it may still not be picked. But if
that’s the case then it may be selected in a year or so for a future collection of
some kind. You have nothing to lose by submitting something to the workshop now.
A competition like this is a great motivation to actually get on with a project, and to
get it finished by a certain deadline. I advise you make your skin or sticker(s) because you
want to and for the enjoyment that you’ll get from creating it. But don’t expect it
to be picked. I have made many things and my biggest regret isn’t that the things
I made didn’t get more popular, but that I didn’t make more of them at the time.
Go make something you’re proud of.