MajorsOct 10, 20265 min readCS2Sell

DreamHack Winter 2013 Major: Fnatic, the first Major and the first souvenirs

Fnatic beat NiP 2-1 in Jönköping to win the first CS:GO Major in November 2013. There were no team stickers yet, but the event introduced Souvenir packages for viewers.

DreamHack Winter 2013 was the first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major. Sixteen teams played for $250,000 at the Elmia exhibition centre in Jönköping, Sweden, from November 28 to 30, 2013, and Fnatic beat Ninjas in Pyjamas 2-1 in the final. There were no team stickers or capsules yet. What the event did introduce was the Souvenir, a skin tied to a specific Major match, which every Major since has had in some form.

How the first Major came about

On September 16, 2013, Valve announced a $250,000 "community-funded" prize pool for The 2013 DreamHack SteelSeries CS:GO Championship. The money came from the Arms Deal update released a month earlier, which added weapon skins and cases to the game. Valve said a portion of the revenue from those items went into a tournament prize fund. GameSpot reported that the share came from keys for the new eSports Weapon Case, and called the prize pool the largest in Counter-Strike's history at that point.

The word "Major" was not in that announcement. Valve adopted it later; a 2016 post looked back on announcing "the first CS:GO Major Championship" in 2013.

DreamHack ran the tournament as part of its Winter festival. Six teams were invited directly: Astana Dragons, Clan-Mystik, compLexity Gaming, Fnatic, iBUYPOWER and VeryGames. The other ten came through earlier DreamHack events, EMS One Fall 2013, the TECHLABS Cup and online and on-site qualifiers.

Format and prize money

Group stage: four groups of four in the GSL format, a small double-elimination bracket in which every match was a single map. The top two in each group advanced.
Playoffs: an eight-team single-elimination bracket, every series best of three.
Maps: Dust II, Inferno, Mirage, Nuke and Train.

The eight playoff teams also earned invitations to the next Major, EMS One Katowice 2014.

Place	Team	Prize
1st	Fnatic	$100,000
2nd	Ninjas in Pyjamas	$50,000
3rd–4th	compLexity Gaming, VeryGames	$22,000 each
5th–8th	Astana Dragons, Copenhagen Wolves, LGB eSports, Recursive eSports	$10,000 each
9th–16th	Eight teams, including Natus Vincere and iBUYPOWER	$2,000 each

Fnatic's lineup

Fnatic had changed their roster shortly before the event. According to HLTV's final report, Markus "pronax" Wallstén had replaced Andreas "MODDII" Fridh and taken over as in-game leader since the two teams last met at DreamHack Bucharest two months earlier. In the final, the report noted, Fnatic often saved money to put an AWP in the hands of Jesper "JW" Wecksell so he could find opening kills.

Player	Name
pronax	Markus Wallstén
JW	Jesper Wecksell
flusha	Robin Rönnquist
schneider	Andreas Lindberg (listed by HLTV today as znajder)
Devilwalk	Jonatan Lundberg
cArn (coach)	Patrik Sättermon

Liquipedia lists Patrik "cArn" Sättermon as the team's coach; HLTV's report described him as Fnatic's manager.

The final: Fnatic 2-1 NiP

Fnatic topped Group A, then beat Recursive eSports 2-1 and compLexity Gaming 2-0. NiP topped Group B and beat LGB eSports and VeryGames, both 2-1. The final was played on the evening of November 30.

Map	Ninjas in Pyjamas	Fnatic
Dust II	14	16
Inferno	16	6
Train	2	16

Dust II decided the series. NiP led 12-3 at half-time, according to Liquipedia's half-by-half scores, before Fnatic won 13 of the 15 second-half rounds to take the map 16-14. HLTV called it one of the best comebacks of the tournament. NiP answered with a 16-6 win on Inferno.

Train was one-sided. Fnatic led 13-2 at the break, and HLTV counted 146,000 viewers on Twitch and GOTV as the second half began. JW took three kills in the pistol round to put Fnatic two rounds from the title, and they closed the map 16-2. HLTV lists JW as the event's MVP.

The eSports case whose key sales fed the first prize pool, and the next Major's capsules, where the eight DreamHack playoff spots became the Legends

No stickers yet, but the first souvenirs

There were no team stickers in November 2013. They arrived at the next Major, and our Katowice 2014 stickers guide tells that story. DreamHack 2013 had something else: the DreamHack 2013 Souvenir Package.

Valve's November 15 post described "keyless" packages that were "the only way to get souvenir weapons, marked by one of several exclusive event stickers". Valve's posts that month explained how to become eligible: watch live tournament matches on GOTV, or on Twitch with a linked Steam account. Packages then dropped at random to viewers.

What set these packages apart from later ones:

One package for the whole event. From ESL One Cologne 2014 onwards each map had its own package. In 2013 there was a single DreamHack 2013 Souvenir Package, and according to the Counter-Strike Wiki it opened into skins from six collections: Dust II, Train, Mirage, Safehouse, Lake and Italy.
One sticker per gun. Each Souvenir carried a single event sticker. Liquipedia lists six designs, Polar Bears, CSGO Logo, CSGO Logo 2, Mountain, Snowman and Snowflake, each in a normal and a foil version, and notes that the stickers came already scraped. They exist only on these souvenirs.
A match in the description. As with later Souvenirs, the item text normally records which match it dropped in.

One quirk dates from later. When Valve added the R8 Revolver in December 2015, an R8 Revolver | Bone Mask from the Bank Collection was added to the DreamHack 2013 package by mistake, according to the Counter-Strike Wiki, so the package can produce a Souvenir of a gun that did not exist in 2013.

The DreamHack 2013 package and two Safehouse Collection skins, one of the six collections it can open into

Collecting DreamHack 2013 items today

Read the description. A DreamHack 2013 Souvenir normally names the two teams in its match, so check which game it came from before comparing prices.
Check the sticker. Foil and normal versions of the same design differ. The stickers were applied already partly scraped, so inspect them in game rather than relying on a thumbnail.
Know the collections. Only skins from the six collections above came out of these packages, plus the R8 Bone Mask added by accident.
Unopened packages still trade. They can still be opened, and our guide to souvenir packages explains how packages evolved after 2013. The Souvenir filter on Buy narrows listings to Souvenir items.

The next Major, EMS One Katowice 2014, brought the first team stickers and a home win for Virtus.pro. Our Katowice 2014 Major article covers that tournament.