CS:GO News Week in Review: November 30th

Fnatic take home title at FACEIT S3

The FACEIT Season 3 LAN finals at Dreamhack Winter finished Saturday in Jönköping, Sweden with Fnatic managing to win out over Luminosity Gaming 2-1 in a hotly contested BO3 series to take first place at the event. Luminosity had a great showing event with their newly revamped roster (see more below), taking out TSM, nV, and NiP.

Cloud9 loses sgares

The North American eSports organization suffered a heavy loss this week with the announcement that their in-game-leader Sean "sgares" Gares will step down from the team'; it is yet unclear whether he will will be retiring from the professional scene entriely. Read a small excerpt from his full statement below:

My time as a player for Cloud9 has brought countless memories and experiences that I'll cherish for a lifetime. Not only did I get an opportunity to travel the world doing something I love, but I was blessed to do it with all great people; people I'm proud to call my friends.”

Luminosity changes two

The top Brazilian team, Luminosty Gaming, made major roster changes this week, dropping longt-time team members Ricardo "boltz" Prass and Lucas "steel" Lopes in order to bring in Lincoln "fnx" Lau and Epitacio "TACO" Pessoa, both from Games Academy. To fill the empty spots, GA have added boltz to their own roster as well as John "felps" Vasconcellos from g3x.

Trade holds introduced for items

Valve has decided to combat the widespread item scam issue with their implementation of their new item trade rules that delay item trades long enough for a victim of a scam catch the error and cancel it before their items are gone. The new system also will now incentivize Steam users to use their mobile authenticater; find out more in the full article.

IEM Championship to return to Katowice

This spring will see the IEM Championships return to Katowice, this time for CS:GO, ESL has announced this week. The tournament will span three days and will feature the customary $250,000 prize pool.

 It's been an incredible ten seasons of the Intel Extreme Masters, and the grand finals to each season - the World Championship - has truly established itself as one of the main events in the calendar of any esports fan. This year's event in Katowice was one of the largest the esports industry has ever seen. With the return of Counter-Strike to the main stage, expanded EXPO part and increased prize money, IEM World Championship in 2016 will be even better. ”