The final eight teams are ready for the Champions stage of the StarLadder Berlin Major at the Mercedes-Benz Arena!

After a hotly contested Legends stage, ENCE and NRG finished 3-0, Vitality, Astralis, and AVANGAR finished at 3-1 while Na’Vi, Liquid, and Renegades made the cut with a 3-2 record.

Watch live coverage beginning Thursday 6:00 pm (GMT+2) on Steam.tv, on the official Twitch stream, and in-game on GOTV to see which team will become the next CS:GO Major Champions.

To celebrate the 20th Anniversary of Counter-Strike, we would like to invite workshop contributors to create content for a themed Weapon Case and Sticker Capsule. The theme will be “Counter-Strike” itself, including all things CS-related, from the original Counter-Strike mod to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The weapon finish and sticker designs may be created in any style. We will need weapons for all tiers to complete the case, from Mil-Spec to Covert; consider this when designing your weapon finishes. All designs must be original with the exception of Counter-Strike logos or icons.

To help sort these themed submissions, please tag them with "CS20" in the title of your submission to the workshop (e.g. CS20 | Finish Name). All previous submissions are eligible for the event. Just make sure to tag them so we can find them more easily.

All submissions for this event must be completed and submitted to the workshop by September 19th 2019. The Weapon Case and Sticker Capsule will be released at a later date, after we have chosen which submissions will be included. All items submitted for this event will still be eligible for future releases.

We have also released a new style guide to help with weapon finish creation, and hopefully answer any questions you may have about the process. The guide can be found here.

With today’s Steam update, we’re making a change to the Workshop submission process to address fake item scams. First-time submissions to the CS:GO workshop will now require email verification before the item can be listed publicly. For those of you that have previously submitted Workshop items, you shouldn't see any change in functionality.

Background
What do we mean by fake item scams? If you browse the Workshop enough, you may have come across an item with an image of a rare skin, promising giveaways or free content. These items often contain phishing links that are used to compromise Steam accounts.



In the past, our moderation team would review Workshop items reported by players. Fake item scams would then be deleted and our team would reach out to the owner of the account and let them know that their account is likely compromised. The problem with this approach was that some items went unreported for quite a while, allowing them to appear to players and get in the way of real submissions.

New Process
With today's update, Steam will send an email to the account owner when a new item is posted for the first time, asking them to review and confirm the item they just posted. If an item was posted without their knowledge, this email provides an easy path to recover the account and change their password.

Our aim with this change is to reduce the potential for scams on the Steam platform, without creating unnecessary hassle for frequent Workshop creators.

Let us know if you have feedback.

Introducing Danger Zone — a fast-paced battle royale game mode built on CS:GO’s tactical gameplay where players use their wits, skill, and resources to fight to the finish. Play solo, or work together as a squad of two or three!

CS:GO is now FREE TO PLAY
So there’s never been a better time to bring in your friends.

All players who played CS:GO before today’s update will receive a commemorative Loyalty Badge they can display on their profile. You were there from the beginning, so show it off! Additionally, all existing CS:GO players have had their accounts upgraded to Prime Status.

As before, Prime Status matches you with other Prime Status players. Additionally, your Prime Status will give you access to the new Souvenir MP5-SD | Lab Rats (available by earning XP while playing Danger Zone matches) and the all new Danger Zone Case.

Danger Zone Case
The Danger Zone Case features 17 community-designed weapon finishes, and the Horizon knives as rare special items. Click here for more details.

A new game mode, a new case, and CS:GO is free. What are you waiting for?
GO! GO! GO!

Watch live coverage from Boston’s Agganis Arena beginning Friday at 10:00am ET (4:00pm CET) on the official Twitch stream (or in game on GOTV) to see which team will become the next CS:GO Major Champions!

https://www.twitch.tv/eleaguetv

Watch live coverage from Boston’s Agganis Arena beginning Friday at 10:00am ET (4:00pm CET) on the official Twitch stream (or in game on GOTV) to see which team will become the next CS:GO Major Champions!

https://www.twitch.tv/eleaguetv

We have added a WebAPI for public access to official playtime distribution on Operation Hydra maps in Competitive and Casual game modes. This allows map creators and the CS:GO community to track the relative popularity of Operation Hydra maps.

In order to access the WebAPI you would need to obtain a Steam WebAPI key, if you don't have one yet, as described in this document.

Here's an example WebAPI call:
https://api.steampowered.com/ICSGOServers_730/GetGameMapsPlaytime/v1/?format=json&key=YOURKEYHERE&mapgroup=operation&gamemode=competitive&interval=week

Supported parameters:

• gamemode={competitive|casual}, used to filter playtime tracking to the requested game mode
  
  
• interval={day|week|month}, used to aggregate playtime across the requested interval. Data aggregation interval used in this WebAPI always ends at midnight GMT that has already occurred. For example, when requesting playtime for the day on July 4th at 09:00:00 GMT, the aggregated data returned will be for the 24 hour period between July 3rd 00:00:01 GMT and July 3rd 23:59:59 GMT. Playtime for the week covers 7 days period ending at last midnight GMT, and playtime for the month covers 31 days period ending at last midnight GMT.
  

WebAPI response:

• WebAPI response contains relative percentages of player-minutes played on the Operation Hydra maps in requested game mode for the requested aggregation interval.
  

We encourage callers to cache the response for 24 hours, as aggregated data doesn't change until next daily aggregation cycle happens after midnight GMT.

We have added a WebAPI for public access to official playtime distribution on Operation Hydra maps in Competitive and Casual game modes. This allows map creators and the CS:GO community to track the relative popularity of Operation Hydra maps.

In order to access the WebAPI you would need to obtain a Steam WebAPI key, if you don't have one yet, as described in this document.

Here's an example WebAPI call:
https://api.steampowered.com/ICSGOServers_730/GetGameMapsPlaytime/v1/?format=json&key=YOURKEYHERE&mapgroup=operation&gamemode=competitive&interval=week

Supported parameters:

• gamemode={competitive|casual}, used to filter playtime tracking to the requested game mode
  
  
• interval={day|week|month}, used to aggregate playtime across the requested interval. Data aggregation interval used in this WebAPI always ends at midnight GMT that has already occurred. For example, when requesting playtime for the day on July 4th at 09:00:00 GMT, the aggregated data returned will be for the 24 hour period between July 3rd 00:00:01 GMT and July 3rd 23:59:59 GMT. Playtime for the week covers 7 days period ending at last midnight GMT, and playtime for the month covers 31 days period ending at last midnight GMT.
  

WebAPI response:

• WebAPI response contains relative percentages of player-minutes played on the Operation Hydra maps in requested game mode for the requested aggregation interval.
  

We encourage callers to cache the response for 24 hours, as aggregated data doesn't change until next daily aggregation cycle happens after midnight GMT.

We have added support for normal maps on Custom Paint Job, Patina, and Gunsmith finish styles. The CZ75-Auto | Victoria has been updated with this feature.

You can read more about it and see an example here.

We look forward to seeing your creations. Happy skinning!

We have added support for normal maps on Custom Paint Job, Patina, and Gunsmith finish styles. The CZ75-Auto | Victoria has been updated with this feature.

You can read more about it and see an example here.

We look forward to seeing your creations. Happy skinning!