2013 DreamHack Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Championship
The 2013 DreamHack SteelSeries Counter Strike: Global Offensive Championship or simply DreamHack Winter 2013 was the first "" to be sponsored by Valve. The competition was held during the Winter 2013 DreamHack digital festival at the Elmia Exhibition and Convention Centre in Jönköping, Sweden. Six invitees joined ten qualifiers to form the sixteen team event. Community funding helped to build the US$250,000 prizepool. The tournament had a peak 145,000 concurrent viewers on twitch.tv and the in-game viewing client.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
In 2016, the game saw two remakes of original "Counter-Strike" maps, as well as the introduction of Prime matchmaking and additional items. As a part of the Operation Wildfire promotion, Nuke was remade and re-released in February with the primary goals being to balance the map and make it more aesthetically pleasing. In April, Prime matchmaking was added to the game. To partake in this mode, the user had to have a verified phone number connected to their account. It was introduced in an attempt to prevent legitimate players from playing with cheaters or high-skilled players playing on alternative, lower ranked accounts, a practice colloquially known as "smurfing". Inferno, another original map, was re-released in October. Valve said they had three reasons behind the remake: "to improve visibility; to make it easier to move around in groups; and to tune it with player feedback." Also in October, consumable items called graffiti were added to the game. These items replaced a feature present in the previous iterations of the series called sprays. Previously, players could customize their sprays. Graffiti ideas can be uploaded to the Steam Workshop in the similar manner as gun skins and players can buy and trade the existing graffiti in game. One month later, glove skins were added.