Over the past two weeks Rio de Janeiro has been the center of Counter-Strike, where 24 of the best teams in the world fought to become IEM Rio Major champions. In the end, only one team was left standing as Outsiders bested Heroic on Mirage and Overpass to secure their first Major championship!

To celebrate our new champions, today we’re releasing the champions autograph capsule, featuring autographs from FL1T, fame, Jame, n0rb3r7, and Qikert in paper, glitter, holo, and gold.

A New Path to the Majors

Starting with the 2023 Paris Major, we’re going to change the way we invite teams to the RMRs.

Previously teams entered the RMRs by direct invitation, or through a series of open qualifiers. For Paris, some teams who aren’t directly invited will get to skip the open qualifiers–teams that consistently perform well in Valve and third-party events will be directly invited to a closed qualifier. There, they’ll compete against teams that enter from an open qualifier.

In the coming weeks we’ll reveal more detail about the new Regional Standings process.

Congratulations to Outsiders, and we’ll see you in Paris!

Today’s update includes several quality-of-life improvements for storage units, and a bunch of visual adjustments to Rio 2022 team and player stickers. Check them out and let us know what you think!

Looking for an easy way to complete your sticker collection while supporting all of the teams and players? Rio 2022 Storage Units are now available. Purchase your storage unit with Paper stickers and you’ll get a commemorative storage unit containing all 145 Paper tournament stickers–the IEM Rio 2022 sticker, every team logo, every autograph. If you’re in the mood for something with a little more sparkle, you can also pick up a storage unit filled with every Glitter sticker!

The first CS:GO Major in Brazil. Live audiences from start to finish. The IEM Rio Major starts October 31st, are you ready?

The IEM Rio Major is fast approaching, and you can show your support–team stickers, player autographs, and the Rio 2022 Viewer Pass are all available for purchase now! 50% of the proceeds go to the players, teams, and organizations taking part in the Major.

Viewer Pass, Stickers, and more

Pick up a Rio 2022 Viewer Pass and you’ll get an upgradable Rio 2022 Event Coin, access to the Pick’em Challenge, team graffiti, Steam.tv flair, and exclusive access to Rio 2022 Souvenir Packages.

Every time you upgrade your coin, you’ll receive a Souvenir Token that can redeemed for a Souvenir Package of the match of your choice. Souvenirs feature gold stickers of the teams and map of the match you selected.

You can earn up to three Souvenir Tokens by playing the Pick’em Challenge, but you can start with more–purchase the ‘Viewer Pass +3’ and you’ll get three Souvenir Tokens right away. And of course, you can purchase as many Souvenir Tokens as you’d like once you’ve activated your Pass.

Looking for your favorite Team or Player? Check out the Team and Player Autograph capsules, featuring paper, glitter, holo, and gold stickers. And shortly after the Grand Final concludes, Champions Autograph Capsules (feature autographs of players on the winning team) will be available for purchase.

Something Spooky in Today’s Update

Today’s update features several community map updates, including a special Halloween version of Ember. Jump into a Danger Zone match and give it a try, if you dare!

It’s CS:GO’s 10th birthday, and we’re celebrating with stickers, maps, and cupcakes!

10 Year Birthday Sticker Capsule

The community pulled together for the 10th anniversary sticker competition, and the results speak for themselves–the 10 Year Birthday Sticker Capsule contains over 60 community submitted designs, including an all new animated ‘Lenticular’ quality. Congratulations to the winners!

Maps

You’ve been patient, and it’s finally here. Tuscan is available in all game modes, so jump in to this classic map and put it through its paces!

And that’s not all: we’ve brought back Anubis and Breach to competitive matchmaking, and added Primetime and Blagai to Wingman!

Cake!

It wouldn’t be a birthday without some cake… specifically, a cupcake topped with a birthday coin! For the next week (until Monday, August 22nd), CS:GO players with Prime status can grab their birthday coin by earning enough XP for their first in-game drop of the week.

Ten years. It’s a big number, yet CS:GO is stronger than ever. Over the past 12 months alone, we’ve seen more players than ever before (averaging over 20 million monthly unique players), record viewership for Majors (2.7m concurrent viewers), and massive community support with over $70 million raised for professional organizations, teams, and players. The future could not look brighter.

Happy Birthday, CS:GO.

Competitive Skill Groups are undergoing some recalibration.

Typically when we ship changes to CS:GO’s matchmaking system, the adjustments are small enough that we don’t include them in our release notes. However, today’s update affects all CS:GO players so it requires some explanation.

When you launch CS:GO, you’ll notice that your Skill Group is not displayed–you’ll have to win one more match to reveal your Skill Group. Most of you will notice a change to your Skill Group, but some of you may find that you were already in the right place.

So jump into a match, or two, or however many it takes for your next win!

Also, for those of you still interested, it’s the last week to purchase Antwerp 2022 Stickers–they are available in the store until August 8th.