DreamHack's Winter event will no longer be considered the tour's Grand Finals.

When DreamHack announced their 2015 Open Tour on March 10, it featured two games that will be played simultaneously throughout the year for the first time in the organization's history with the return of StarCraft 2 and the addition of CS:GO. The tour has also expanded to seven stops throughout Europe, with England and France being the new additions to the competitive circuit.

Noticeably absent from the reveal was confirmation that the famed Winter event in Jonkoping, which has served as the Grand Finals event for the tour since its inception in 2011, would continue to be so. In an interview with DreamHack’s Business Development Director Tomas Lyckedal on this year's plans, Lyckedal confirmed to theScore eSports that the Winter event will no longer be considered the finals for the tour.

"Right now DH Winter is not considered a 'Grand Final' as it was in previous years," said Lyckedal. "We'll have the chance to come back on this, but we still want to see how for example Valve is planning their Major Events during 2015. Last year we saw having our own Grand Finals for DHOpen SC2 right after the BlizzCon Grand Finals didn't feel right. We want to create DreamHack Open to connect with the rest of the scene and not exist in its own bubble."

Lyckedal explains that DreamHack would rather feed into the StarCraft 2 WCS point system instead of holding their own final, and that the team will await to see Valve's move in dubbing the 2015 Winter event as a $250,000 major. Last year's Winter event was a Valve major, with LDLC taking the championship over hometown heroes NiP.

Running two games on the tour will be a first for DreamHack, one that Lyckedal says the team has been wanting to achieve for quite a while. DreamHack did this by adding CS:GO to the tour roster, a game series that has a storied tournament history at DreamHack events. StarCraft 2 meanwhile has had its events list reduced to three throughout the year, not counting the grand final.

"We have been wishing for two titles in DreamHack Open for a long time", said Lyckedal. "We have tried, but it's been hard to pull off, but with CS:GO and the history we have in Counter-Strike - we felt this is the perfect opportunity. Also we want to stick around and support StarCraft II: Heart of Swarm, but as with all business it comes with constraints and priorities - and going from six tournaments to 10 tournaments, and two new countries (France & England) comes with a price. We also felt we needed to put StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm at events where it fit the global WCS calendar the best, so we gave priority to events that can be given WCS points and lead up to the Global Finals later this year.

"We evaluated all possible scenarios, but in the end we're just happy that our sponsors supported us to do two game titles and continue support StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm tournaments in 2015. It's the game that built a lot what DreamHack is in eSports today and we will continue support the community many years to come."

While StarCraft 2 will not officially be on the tour circuit for either the longstanding Summer or Winter events, there's a strong chance that Legacy of The Void, expected from Blizzard by the end of 2015, will make one of its first official tournament debuts come later in the year.

"At DreamHack Winter 2014: The Day Blizzard announce when Legacy of Void will be released we'll take that decision," said Lyckedal. "We're super-excited about the new game, and believe it will play a fundamental role in our eSports strategy our coming years."

$280,000 in prize money has been put up for CS:GO throughout the tour by DreamHack. While more than a sufficient amount in previous years, other leagues such as ESL, ESEA, and FaceIt have upped the ante with announcements of several hundred thousand dollar prize pools per season or event. Lyckedal says the focus should be on the product and not the prize money.

"We think it will be enough to attract a bunch of top teams for each tournament," he said. "We only will have four invite slots per event for example. Obviously you always want to offer higher and higher prize pools, but DreamHack is unlike many others - a company without venture capital or similar investors, and we want eSports to be sustainable for everyone.

"In general, the current focus in eSports (especially in Valve games) on prize pool is not very healthy. Who talks about it in Champions League? Super Bowl? LCS? I think the overall product you offer teams, visitors and viewers is very important to us."

While some StarCraft fans may not be satisfied with a reduced number of events, other games with current DreamHack presence such as Dota 2, League of Legends, and Hearthstone, were not included on the tour. Lyckedal says DreamHack is committed to those other games, and that they are comfortable in the current position of where they fit inside the event.

"On the side of SC2 and CS:GO, we feel that only League of Legends and Dota could qualify for being a DreamHack Open titles. But in LoL its difficult since the LCS teams are busy with LCS all year around (which would make it hard to qualify for the first bullet point - to pro's participating) and in Dota we already run a huge eSports project called DreamLeague (which is a Studio-based online league) that leads into two DreamHack-events per year. And we believe thats best for that game & community. For HearthStone we're planning big stuff in 2015 but we believe that Hearthstone is not the 'stage show game' like the one's mentioned above, but more about participation and have a different format for it. We'll announce that later."