DreamHack Winter 2013

Lore & Background

Six teams – Astana Dragons, compLexity Gaming, VeryGames, Clan-Mystik, Fnatic, and Team iBuyPower – were directly invited to participate in the tournament. In addition to those six teams, ten other teams qualified through other tournaments. For instance, Ninjas in Pyjamas qualified by winning the DreamHack Summer 2013 tournament; Copenhagen Wolves qualified by winning EMS One Fall 2013; LGB eSports qualified through an online qualifier; and Reason Gaming qualified through the BYOC qualifier. Teams were split up into four groups, and all group matches were best-of-ones. The highest seed would play the lowest seed in each group and the second and third seeds would play against each other. The winner of those two matches would play each other to determine which team moved on to the playoff stage, while the losers of the first round of matches also played. The loser of the lower match was then eliminated from the tournament. With one team advanced and one eliminated, the two remaining teams would play an elimination match for the second playoff spot. This format is known as the GSL format, named for the Global StarCraft II League. The playoff bracket consisted of eight teams, two from each group. All of these matches were best-of-three, single elimination. Teams advanced in the bracket until a final winner was decided, and the eight teams to make the playoff bracket earned automatic invitations to the next Major, EMS One Katowice 2014. There were five maps to choose from. In the group stage, each team bans two maps so that one remains. In the playoffs, each team bans one map and chooses one map; the remaining map would be the decider map of the series. Broadcast talent included hosts Scott "SirScoots" Smith and Jonas "bsl" Vikan; commentators Corey "dunN" Dunn, Tomi "lurppis" Kovanen, and Stuart "TosspoT" Saw; and analyst Duncan "Thorin" Shields.

In Their Own Story

The arena smelled of cold air and energy drinks. Outside, Stockholm's December dark pressed against the glass walls, but inside the temperature was a different kind of cold—the tight, held-breath silence of a final round on Mirage. Ninjas in Pyjamas had one life left. The Fnatic AWPer was somewhere in the mid tunnel, patient as always, and the clock was bleeding down. The Swedish captain tapped his headset, said two words in Swedish that the crowd in front of the stage somehow understood without translation, and the next forty seconds became the kind of round that gets replayed in barbershops and university dorms for years. A flash, a jump, a headshot through a window that shouldn't have been possible. The arena detonated. Someone in the front row was already crying. The trophy, still warm from the stage lights, was lifted above the smoke of a round that had ended and a winter that was, for one night, no longer cold.

Reader's Guide

The tournament featured a group stage using the GSL format, followed by a single-elimination playoff bracket. All group matches were best-of-one; all playoff matches were best-of-three. The map pool consisted of five maps. In the group stage, each team bans two maps so that one remains. In the playoffs, each team bans one map and chooses one map; the remaining map is the decider. The winner of the tournament was Fnatic, who defeated Ninjas in Pyjamas 2–1 in the finals.

Did You Know?

• The tournament had a peak 145,000 concurrent viewers on Twitch and the in-game viewing client.
• The prize pool was US$250,000, built with community funding.
• The event was held at the Elmia Exhibition and Convention Centre in Jönköping, Sweden.