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Counter-Strike: Global Offensive’s Valve-ran Majors get prize pool increase to $1,000,000

CSGO prize pools

Valve have announced that, going forward, all CS:GO major tournaments they run will have their prize pool increased by four times, up to one million dollars flat. This now means that first place will be taking home twice the entire prize pool of previous tournaments and bumps CS:GO’s prize money up higher than almost anything except Dota 2. Even split between five players, managers and teams, winners will be raking in serious dough.

Too rich for your blood? Try one of the other best FPS games.

The new prize pool was announced via the official CS:GO blog, stating simply that as the game’s popularity and competition increased, so should the prize pool. Bumping it from $250,000 to $1,000,000 is no joke, especially since it quintuples the earnings of first place from $100,000 to $500,000. Perhaps more important is the impact on teams that finish lower down the rungs, increasing from $2,000 to $8,750 at the lowest level – it takes a lot of qualifiers to get there, and now those that do are at least compensated for some of that time.

Here’s the full rundown of the new prize structure, as well as the old for comparison:

  • Winner $500,000 (up from $100,000)
  • Finalist $150,000 (up from $50,000)
  • Semi-Finalist $70,000 (up from $22,000)
  • Quarter Finalist $35,000 (up from $10,000)
  • Group Stage $8,750 (up from $2,000)

The new prize pool will first be in effect at MLG Columbus at the end of March. Some more details about that event available on Liquipedia, while you can read about the prize pool changes on the official site.

Meanwhile, Valve have been making moves in other areas too. A bug-fixing and tweaking patch was released with no balance changes but various fixes to issues that had been reported. On Twitter, CS:GO level designer and dev team member Matt Wood tweeted about a new e-mail address Valve had set up for feedback and bug reporting, [email protected]. Exactly how much use they’ll get out of a publically available e-mail address given to such a massive communtiy is up in the air but it’s an improvement.