14 DAY TRIAL // Valve has just rolled out a brand new patch for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, finally kicking off the traditional Pick'Em challenge for the upcoming ESL One Katowice 2015 competition, through which players can get stickers with the logos of the major teams competing in the eSports event and use them to bet on their favorites.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has been around for quite some time now, but in the last couple of years its popularity has skyrocketed, with millions of players on Steam enjoying the multiplayer shooter, while even more take pleasure in watching eSport competitions for the actual game.
The next major competitive event is ESL One Katowice 2015, which takes place between March 12 and 15 in Poland and sees some of the world's best teams compete for the huge prize pool.
The Pick'Em Challenge is now live for Katowice 2015
As with recent major competitions, Valve has just rolled out a fresh update for CS:GO in order to kick off the Katowice 2015 Pick'Em Challenge, not to mention the Team and Event stickers for the major tournament.
In case you're new to the Pick'Em Challenge, it's a virtual competition in which CS:GO players are tasked with buying stickers with the logos of their favorite teams and then predict their victory in each match.
For example, if you think that Ninjas in Pyjamas will be victorious over Virtus Pro, you can use your NiP sticker to bet on that match. For that competition day, the sticker will be locked and can't be used to bet on other matches or be applied to any of your guns. At the end of the day, it gets unlocked and you can use it for any purpose.
Depending on how many winning picks you make, you earn more points and even get a trophy at the end of the event, not to mention great spots on the leaderboards.
A few other tweaks are also included in the patch
The update for CS:GO also brings forth a few more tweaks and bug fixes relating to the flavor text of Operation Vanguard, not to mention solutions to potential security problems and an increase for the client-side demo recording buffers.
Check out the full changelog below, via the official website.