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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship prize pools upped to $1M

With esports prize pools rapidly increasing, Valve has stepped up its game for the competitive Counter-Strike: Global Offensive circuit.

Ozzie Mejia

February 23, 2016 5:00 PM

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The prize pools for major esports tournaments continues to grow bigger. On the heels of Halo and Call of Duty upping their respective antes, Valve is stepping its prize game up, as well. Today, it announced that each Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship going forward will offer a $1 million prize pool, starting with MLG Columbus 2016.

"When we announced the first CS:GO Major Championship in 2013, we hoped the Majors would be rallying points for the community, tent-pole events that could draw new audiences and amplify the value of all events," explains the Counter-Strike blog. "Since then, the professional CS:GO community has been growing at an incredible rate. CS:GO tournaments are now among the largest esports events in the world, drawing global audiences of millions of viewers, filling massive venues, and garnering higher prize pools. Professional CS:GO has grown, and the CS:GO Major Championships are about to grow with it."

MLG Columbus is set to run from March 29-April 3. The final field of eight teams will be determined after this weekend's CS:GO Major LAN Qualifier.

Ozzie Mejia

Senior Editor

Ozzie has been playing video games since picking up his first NES controller at age 5. He has been into games ever since, only briefly stepping away during his college years. But he was pulled back in after spending years in QA circles for both THQ and Activision, mostly spending time helping to push forward the Guitar Hero series at its peak. Ozzie has become a big fan of platformers, puzzle games, shooters, and RPGs, just to name a few genres, but he’s also a huge sucker for anything with a good, compelling narrative behind it. Because what are video games if you can't enjoy a good story with a fresh Cherry Coke?