The next CS:GO major starts in less than a week’s time, and the game has just received
an update to ready you all for it.
Buy this pass, and 50% of the proceeds go to the players and organisations participating
in the tournament, with the other half presumably going to Valve!
The pass costs $10.
Obviously, you don’t need to buy it to watch the major or anything like that- it just gives
you extra features should you want to get more invested in watching the major, and to
get some special digital items.
You get stuff like a unique team flair if watching matches on steam tv.
And you get infinite team graffitis to spray in-game, for the duration of the event.
There’s still a cooldown period between sprays, though, so you can’t go completely
mad, liquiding all over the place or G2’ing in every corner of Inferno.
*PSSSHHHHT*
One of the exclusive items you get from buying the pass is an Event Coin which will remain
on your profile forever more.
This starts out as bronze, and then can be upgraded to silver, gold and then eventually
diamond by completing ‘challenges’. 4 of these 9 challenges are participation awards-
literally make guesses at each stage of the tournament and you’re guaranteed at least
a silver coin by the end of it.
Just remember to pick your choices before each stage begins, or it’ll be too late,
and the chance to guess will be missed.
The remaining 5 challenges require you pick enough correct teams.
So a gold coin involves a bit of skill and luck, and the diamond… a hlelllallot.
The structure of majors is… confusing.
Let’s start by going back in time, (back, back back) and to covering what’s already
happened.
In April, we had the RMR’s, where teams in different regions in the world competed
for places at this major.
Those that did the best became Legends, and get to skip the first stage of the major.
Those below them became the Challengers, and those below that became the Contenders.
And anybody below that doesn’t even get to participate in the major at all.
So the challengers and contenders from these RMR matches will be competing in the upcoming,
first proper ‘stage’ of the major, which is called the ‘Challengers’.
Even though it actually comprises of challenger and contender teams.
Like I said, confusing.
What YOU need to know is that these are the 16 teams participating in this stage, and
for the first, and now readily available stage of the pick’ems, you have to choose 7 of
these who you think will make it through, as well as 1 team who will win all 3 of their
games, and another who will lose all 3.
And then it’s onto the Legends stage, later on in May!
It used to be the case that the top 8 teams from the previous major were automatically
invited along to the next as Legends, but since 2020, the legends have been decided
in the RMR stage, along with everybody else.
These 8 teams are the legends this time around, thanks to their excellent performance last
month.
The remaining 8 places will be filled by winners from the previous, challengers stage which
I covered just a second ago.
And then the Champions stage will be the 8 winning teams from the legends stage.
Hopefully that’s explained it all to you- you might think I would know this off by heart
by now, but I still have to research it again for every major, so don’t feel stupid if
some of this was news to you, too!
There are souvenir packages, which when unboxed, give you a weapon skin, plastered in gold-tiered
stickers of the players and teams involved in a particular match from the tournament.
Say, for instance, that Renegades play Astralis on Dust2.
If you have a souvenir token available and would really love to exchange it for a souvenir
from that particular match, you’ll get one of these, and unboxing it will give you a
random weapon skin from the Dust2 collection, since that’s the map that was played, and
it will be plastered in Renegade and Astralis team and player stickers.
There are 3 ways to get a souvenir token- the first is to upgrade your coin.
Since it can go silver, gold and then diamond, that’s up to 3 you can get simply from having
a viewer pass and by getting lucky with your pick-ems.
You can buy extra souvenir tokens from the market for about $3, and if you haven’t
yet bought a pass, you can get one with 3 tokens thrown in at a 5% discount on the store.
So there’s no limit to how many of these you can get- but beyond the 3 you get from
being lucky, you do have to pay for the rest.
New for this Major are GLITTER stickers!
These sparkle like a vampire in the sunlight!
A great use of pixel shaders.
To make room for these, we’ve lost the old ‘FOIL’ style of sticker, which used to
have a metallic sheen.
Like it was silver foil.
Hence its name.
So just as an example: along the bottom are the 4 old tiers of Astralis sticker, and along
the top are the new ones.
Holo has been promoted from remarkable to exotic tier, and Glitter has filled the hole
left behind.
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