Prize Pool for Upcoming CS: GO Tournament Funded Entirely by the Community

Why fund a prize pool out-of-pocket when you can get the community to do it? Clearly, that’s Valve’s logic, and it seems to be working out well. After a recent update hit Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, players were able to purchase in-game items. You guessed it: A portion of the proceeds from the sales of these items got added to a prize pool, and its first use will go down at Sweden’s DreamHack at the end of November.

As hard as it is to believe, given Counter-Strike‘s major appeal to teams and tournaments, the upcoming prize pool at $250,000 marks the largest that the series has ever seen. That’s rather paltry when compared to the $1.4 million that the Dota 2 competition “The International” saw just a couple of months ago, that’s for sure.

Still, that’s really not the big news here. The fact that the community funded this prize pool entirely is, and according to Valve, this isn’t going to be the last time it’s going to happen. As Valve states: “Through this initiative, The 2013 DreamHack SteelSeries CS:GO Championship will be one of the largest cash awards in Counter-Strike’s history and the initiative is designed to help fuel prize pools at other upcoming CS:GO events.“

Perhaps we’ll begin seeing this with other franchises, as well?