Valve’s used to giving away millions of dollars — sometimes their money, sometimes others. What’s unusual about their latest competition is that it’s not for clicking heads or hitting hooks — it’s purely for designing CSGO skins.
It’s called Dreams & Nightmares, and it runs from tomorrow until October 21. The whole idea is to create new nightmare or dream-themed skins for guns in CS:GO, and 10 winning entries will receive $US100,000 a piece.
The official FAQ for the competition says people can work alone or in teams, and people can file as many submissions as they like. The artwork will also only be granted to Valve for use in CSGO — Valve won’t own any of the art submitted, so its creators can license it or sell it for other purposes. Any work submitted may also be selected for future CSGO case drops, so creators that aren’t successful in this competition might be included in future major CSGO updates.
“We do ask that you keep and/or post your sketches, mood boards, concept art, etc., so that we can confirm the entry is an original,” Valve added. One person can also win multiple times, if the entries are good enough.
The winners will be notified by November 22 Australian time, provided winners have finalised all the necessary banking, revenue split and tax details for the submission.
If you want some form of guidance, there’s an official CSGO style guide on the Valve site here. It contains details of how and why Valve has picked previous artstyles for CSGO cases. There’s guidelines around saturation and vibrance that need to be followed — a gun that features pure black will be darker than CSGO‘s in-game shadows, for instance, and it’ll look out of place. Gun finishes must feature a low violence submission if they include blood or skulls, too.
You can find more details about how to enter here, and there’s an official CSGO Artists group on Steam specifically for the Dreams & Nightmares contest.
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