Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships
The Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championships, commonly known as Majors, are (CS:GO) esports tournaments sponsored by Valve Corporation, the game's developer. The Majors were first introduced in 2013 and took place in Jönköping, Sweden and was hosted by DreamHack with a total prize pool of 250,000. Six teams were directly invited, six teams were invited based on previous tournament results, and another four teams came from direct qualifiers.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
"Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" is the sequel to the popular first-person shooter "", developed by Valve Corporation. "Global Offensive"s development began when Hidden Path Entertainment attempted to port "Counter-Strike: Source" onto video game consoles, prior to the end of their lifespan. During the development, Valve saw the opportunity to turn the port into a full game and expand on the predecessor's gameplay. "Global Offensive" began development in March 2010, and was revealed to the public on August 12, 2011. The closed beta started on November 30, 2011, and was initially restricted to around ten thousand people who received a key at events intended to showcase "Global Offensive". After issues such as client and server stability were addressed, the beta was opened up to progressively more people, and at E3 2012, Valve announced that "Global Offensive" would be released on August 21, 2012, with the open beta starting roughly a month before that. Before the public beta, Valve invited professional "Counter-Strike" players to play-test the game and give feedback.