Valve has announced the results of the Dreams and Nightmares skin contest. Instead of the initial plan to select 10 winning entries, the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive dev team selected an impressive 17 weapon finishes that will enter the next case. Join the CS.MONEY Blog for a look at the winners’ gallery.
Dreams & Nightmares contest
Before we talk about the winners, here’s a brief summary of the contest.
From July 22 through October 21, 2021, anyone with a valid Steam account could create a skin and submit it for the $1,000,000 contest. The top 10 entries will go into the Dreams and Nightmares case, and their creators will receive $100,000 each.
Eventually, Valve had to increase the prize pool from $1,000,000 to $1,700,000 since in the end, the company chose 17 skins, not 10, for the upcoming case. All told, more than 15,000 skin entries were submitted in the contest!
Now on to the winners.
Covert skins: AK-47 Nightwish и MP9 Starlight
Two rarest skins from the case were designed by Nextgenz and TheDanidem, respectively.
Fun fact: the image of the AK-47 Nightwish was based on a dream about a dead deer. By the way, the picture changes its color depending on the lighting.
The MP9 Starlight was inspired by Art Deco and Alphonse Mucha’s artwork. TheDanidem has turned the weapon’s white elements into marble — a feature clearly visible when next to the light sources. Besides the rainbow unicorn and marble, he decorated the design with gold inlays, making it look nothing short of gorgeous.
Classified items: toothy watermelons & lots of eyes
The less-rare category includes three items. They are the MP7 Fear by Niran, the Dual Berettas Beware of Sleeping by Kuch, and the FAMAS Rapid Eyes by Sparkwire.
The MP7 Fear utilizes the chromatic aberration effect: the black silhouette is embellished with red, green, and blue shadows, with an orange glow as the background. Does it look powerful!
The main decoration of the Dual Berettas Beware of Sleeping is two toothy watermelons. The gun looks incredibly creepy, especially when you’re inspecting it and the two toothy creatures are giving you spine-tingling stares at once. Spooky stuff.
Sparkwire has decorated the FAMAS Rapid Eyes with a whole bunch of eyes gazing in all directions. He attached each eye to its own platform, and there’s a gravity center sticking out above the gun magazine, sucking in the bullets and those very eye platforms.
Five Restricted skins
The list of Restricted weapon finishes includes:
- XM1014 Zombie Offensive by oKeyush,
- Maloo and his PP-Bizon Space Cat,
- G3SG1 Dream Glade Green by Druida,
- Madara and Blazer’s collaboration: M4A1-S Insomnia
- and USP-S Ticket to Hell by supremat.
Some fun facts.
The USP-S Ticket to Hell features a QR-code. Scanning it will result in visiting the Workshop page of supremat, who created this USP skin.
The M4A1-S Insomnia was developed by the in-game company Eternity, a fiction of creators which exists within the Valve game universe.
The presence of zombies on the XM1014 Zombie Offensive is the result of an accident: “Terrorists broke into a secret biological weapons laboratory, but something went wrong. One of them mistook the can of the virus for soda and quenched his thirst with it.”
Mil-Spec: skulls, Ouija boards & a soothsaying octopus
Rounding out the list of winners are seven Mil-Spec skins. Here they are:
- Five-seven AlphaAndOmega by Anbu and kasim.tattoo;
- SCAR-20 CHICKENFIGHT by Guardian Gear;
- MP5-SD Kid’s Necronomicon, created by hook и KvaHu;
- Mac-10 Pixies, brought to us by Catmagen и b3d;
- Sawed-Off Ouija from Sorarox’ Workshop;
- P2000 Flying In A Dream by Des;
- MAG-7 Predictor, created by Jerry и zlo.
Valve will divide the $1,700,000 prize pool among 24 skin-makers. At the same time, more than half of them — 14 — were first-time contributors to the game. Credit where credit is due: amazing job!
Notably, the game isn’t receiving the weapon finishes highly praised by the community, nor the creations of the 2Minds studio.
It’s as yet still unknown just when the Dreams and Nightmares case will appear. However, Valve have already stated they will work with the artists over the coming weeks to add the skins to the game. This means we should expect the case to be shipped in December at best; the appearance and names of the items might change by then.
Sign up for our newsletter in order not to miss the new case when it drops. It will help you always stay on top of the most important and exciting events in the world of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
Do you like getting CS:GO news in our vibe?
What are you waiting for? Hit subscribe!
