DreamHack CS:GO Grand Final After making it through their group stage matches and working their way through the quarter and semi finals, both Ninjas in Pyjamas and Team VeryGames managed to meet each other once again on another Grand Final stage. This time it was at DreamHack Winter’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Tournament. In the end, the hometown heroes NiP claimed the top spot; taking first place in this years DreamHack Winter: CS:GO Tournament. They won 16-9 on de_dust2_se and 16-1 on de_inferno_se. Now that DreamHack Winter and the ESWC are in the past, all eyes will be on next week’s Insomnia47 and the Mind Sports Festival CS:GO Tournaments. The following week, the Thor Open will be taking place in Stockholm, Sweden, and with new CS:GO tournaments popping up every day, 2013 is shaping up to be a great year the competitive scene. If you’re feeling inspired from all of this professional CS:GO and really want to get into the action, fire up CS:GO and hop into a Classic Competitive match. Work your way up the skill groups and don’t stop until you’re Global Elite. If you’re looking to get a team together, thanks to the Steam Autumn Sale, you can pick up a copy of CS:GO to gift to a friend for 25% off. What are you waiting for? Go! Go! Go!

The Final Day of DreamHack’s CS:GO Tournament Today marks the final day of DreamHack Winter’s Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Tournament. Following the wrap up of groups C and D, the top two teams from each group were randomly selected and paired up for the quarter-finals. Last night, NiP drew Progaming.TD in their quarter-final match and the Copenhagen Wolves drew MouseSports. Both NiP and MouseSports came out on top, finishing up their matches 2:0 and will be moving forward to face one another in the semi-finals. The second half of the quarter-finals begin today at 10:00AM (CET) so make sure to tune in to watch the live stream of the matches! You can find the live streams for all of today’s CS:GO matches HERE. VeryGames is matched up against Team Dynamic and the Lemondogs will be going head to head with the Absolute Legends in the second half of the quarter-finals. The winners of these matches will face each other later today in the semi-final bracket at 1:00PM (CET), followed by the Grand Finals! You can find the full day’s tournament schedule HERE, so make sure you tune in and see which team will be claiming the top prize at DreamHack Winter’s CS:GO Grand Finals! What are you waiting for? GO! GO! GO!

CS:GO at DreamHack Winter We’re coming to you live today from Jönköping, Sweden for DreamHack Winter 2012. This year, DreamHack has brought on Counter-Strike: Global Offensive as an official tournament and we are excited to be here in Sweden to witness all of the action. This year’s CS:GO Tournament has brought together the best teams in the world to battle it out for a total prize pool of 300,000 SEK. While we’re here at DreamHack, we’ll be speaking with teams and watching all of the CS:GO tournament action. This week’s Pro-Tip video will be postponed until next week, but for now you can learn from the pros by watching them compete all weekend. All of the matches can be streamed live by tuning into them HERE. You can keep up with the full schedule of all of the CS:GO tournament’s matches HERE. You can also get caught up with any of the tournament results you may have missed HERE. While at DreamHack, we’ll be posting behind the scenes photos on our Instagram account and sharing live updates on Twitter. Make sure to follow us on both via our username: CSGO_DEV for both accounts. Which teams will rise above the competition and make it to the finals? Who do you think will win it all? Tune in this weekend and find out!

Where there’s smoke, there’s no fire Today’s update introduces a few changes to molotovs and incendiary grenade fire. These changes were made because of consistent feedback from pro teams and the community. In addition to some tweaks for balance, the fire can now be extinguished by smoke grenades (change notes). We’ve also included a number of fixes to GOTV and general game play. Special thanks again to the pro teams at ESWC for their input on this update. Speaking of pros, we’ve got a new Pro Tip for you this week from AZK of Team Dynamic. Wondering where to position yourself with the AWP, or how to get the most out of the weapon with (and without) the scope? AZK will get you pointed in the right direction. In keeping with learning from the pros, you can watch the top US CS:GO teams play this weekend (Nov. 16-18) at the ESEA Season 12 LAN Finals. You can find the match schedules here and we’ll be blasting out the stream info as it goes live on twitter, so follows us (@CSGO_DEV) for up to date info. Next week, we’ll be flying to Sweden to cover the enormous event at DreamHack (Nov. 22-24), and the end of the month the UK hosts a CS:GO tournament at Insomnia47. Of course, we’re just scratching the surface: more CS:GO events are popping up every day. Don’t miss a minute of the action, get in the game today! (And thanks for the headline suggestion, styuR!)