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Major tournament. The history of the development of Major-events CS: GO

Major 2019 - 13th edition of the international cyber tournament popular game Counter-Strike Global Offensive. The best gaming teams in the world will gather under the banner of the competition: FaZe Clan, Natus Vincere, mousesports, SK Gaming. Which of the championship participants will achieve success, and will there be Russian cyber teams among the contenders for victory? We are gaining patience. The first matches of the new championship are just around the corner!

Where and when will the CS: GO Major 2019 take place

The new edition of ELEAGUE Major will take place in January 2019. The exact date and venue are not known. The last edition of the tournament ran from 12 to 28 January 2018.

The ELEAGUE Major 2019 schedule will consist of several big rounds:

stage of applicants;
stage of legends;
stage of champions.

During the first round, 16 teams will play against each other: 8 worst participants in Major 2018 and 8 winners of the qualification, which will be determined in October - November 2018.

The second stage will bring together the eight winners of the first round and the 8 best teams participating in Major 2018.

Finally, in the last round, 8 cyber teams will compete for the main prizes of the playoff competition. The finale will be the culmination of the final part.

There is no information yet where the final part of the cyber championship will take place. The last draw of the competition was taken over by the USA. The Legends and Challengers stages took place in Atlanta, and the championship round took place in Boston.

ELEAGUE Major 2018 CS: GO Teams

In the last edition, the organizers increased the number of participating teams to 24. How many teams will compete for the awards of the upcoming edition of the championship is an open question.

The 8 best teams of Major 2018 will almost certainly take part in the 13th edition. Here is a list of them:

Cloud9;
FaZe Clan;
Natus Vincere;
SK Gaming;
Fnatic;
G2 Esports;
mousesports;
Quantum Bellator Fire.

Results of the Major 2018 in Counter-Strike

Counter-Strike Global Offensive is one of the most popular network games based on the legendary "counter". The CS: GO audience numbers millions of gamers around the world. At the same time, the most talented Counter-Strike amateurs have united into professional teams. Every year the best of them fight for the victory in the Major.

The strongest cyber teams of our time include Cloud9, Gambit Esports, FaZe Clan, Mousesports, SK Gaming. They have achieved success more than once at the largest cyber tournaments. Experts expect that one of the listed teams will apply for main jackpot prize pool for ELEAGUE Major 2019.

So far, the reigning champion is Cloud9. American gamers took the lead at the home tournament in 2018. In the final series of matches, they confidently dealt with the Europeans from FaZe Clan with a score of 2: 1.

Gaming associations from the CIS are very widely represented in the Major. The most famous teams include Natus Vincere (Ukraine) and Gambit Esports (Kazakhstan). Ukrainian and Kazakh Counter-Strike masters have excelled at the largest cyber competitions more than once. Gambit Esports is a recent triumphant of the Major. Kazakhstani professionals became the best in 2017.

Russia at the Major is represented by such teams as Quantum Bellator Fire, Virtus.pro and Vega Squadron. These are worthy teams. They are able to fight for the highest places.

In the last edition of the championship, the guys from Quantum Bellator Fire became the best cyber team. The Russians were able to get to the final stage of the competition. But in the quarterfinals, gamers from Natus Vincere stood in their way with an insurmountable barrier.

Many tournament fans, and just CS: GO players, are interested in: "When is the next major in CS: GO?" The detailed answer will be below. A guide to this major is at.

The place (grand final and group stage) as you understood from the name chose Krakow (TAURON Arena), this city is located not far from the well-known Katowice. The organizers are PGLesprots, in collaboration with Valve. General prize fund is $ 1,000,000. The entire tournament will be held in the summer, from June 1st to July 23rd. Why do you ask for so long? And all because everything will happen in stages. Below we will describe in more detail all the stages with the schedule.

1. Regional tour.

It all starts on June 1, with the regional minor championships in Asia, then in the Americas ( June 8), CIS ( June 8) and Europe ( June 15th). At each minor, eight teams will fight for the chance to win the $ 50,000 prize pool and knock their way to the Major itself.

2. LAN Qualifier.

WITH June 29 to July 4, the top two teams of the regional round will play LAN qualifiers, where they will face the eight worst teams from the previous Major (Atlanta). Over the course of four days, these teams will fight to determine which of them will make it to the Major group stages.

3. The final stage.

WITH July 16 to July 19, all sixteen teams will compete in the group stage to advance to the playoffs. 21 July, new legends will hit the main stage of Tauron Arena for the playoffs! The grand final will be held July 23!

So, in a nutshell:

PGL 2017 Krakow CS: GO Major Championship Series:

June 1-4 - Asian Regional Minor Championship
June 8-11 - CIS Regional Minor Championship
June 8-11 - North and South America Regional Minor Championships
June 15-18 - European Regional Minor Championship
June 29 - July 2 - LAN-Qualifiers.
July 16 - 19 - Major-Group Stage Championship
July 21 - 23 - Playoffs and Grand Final!

The largest cyber tournament in gaming discipline starts on July 16 CS: GO- PGL Major Kraków 2017. Like the last two years, the prize pool will be $ 1 million, for which 16 teams will fight. Especially for the site, the editorial staff of StarLadder prepared a history of “majors” in CS: GO and tells how the tournaments have gained popularity among spectators and players.

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Release Counter-Strike: Global Offensive took place on August 21, 2012. A well-known online shooter for a large share of gamers was released on the Steam platform, and its cost was $ 10. Besides, CS: GO also looked at the consoles of the previous generation - Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Actually, due to the fact that the new game from the Counter-Strike series was originally conceived as a multiplatform, CS: GO so different from CS 1.6 and CS: Source who at that time were living out their the last days... Fortunately, Valve later changed its mind and focused on the development and development of the PC version of the game.

Unsurprisingly, the hardcore PC gamer community has received little enthusiasm for the semi-console game. Old players from the 1.6 era could not get used to the new unusual mechanics, as a result of which many esports players ended their careers and never returned to this game. New ones spoiled by casual shooters like Call of duty, there was simply nothing to surprise.

As a result, the audience of the game was rather low, and the pro-scene hardly developed. The turning point was the announcement of DreamHack Winter 2013, which took place a year after the game's release. This event was personally sponsored by Valve and received the status of "Major". The first Major event in history CS: GO.

To collect the then-record prize pool for a competitive CS: GO in the amount of $ 250,000, Valve decided on a little trick. The game developers have released an update called The Arms Deal Update which added to CS: GO cosmetic items, or to be more precise, weapon skins that can be obtained from chests. So at that moment CS followed in the footsteps Dota 2 and, despite the initial disapproval from the oldfags, she raised the hype she needed so much around her at that time.

Having built the foundation, Valve later specially released Esports 2013 Case for DreamHack Winter 2013, part of the sale of which went to the prize pool of the tournament. Audience CS: GO I quickly got used to chests and began to spend seriously on them, and Valve quickly raised the amount she needed for the first major. This crowdfunding scheme continued to work in 2014.

After the first esports chests, Valve went even further and added souvenir kits with items to the game CS: GO that could be obtained by watching DreamHack Winter 2013 matches. Thanks to this, the tournament received a significant boost in terms of the number of viewers. To this day, Valve is actively using this trick, which more than once allowed it to collect more than one million viewers on the monitors for the broadcast.

As a result, professionals, as expected, became interested in the discipline, having seen such rapid progress and prospects, just like ordinary players who laid the foundation for the revival of the CS community. This is how the conditional “first era” of major tournaments began.

First era

The initial stage of the development of the majors began with DreamHack Winter 2013 and ended with the same tournament, only in 2014. Major events were held at small venues, the gaming community was still beginning to form, and broadcasts CS: GO just gaining momentum. Valve continued to work with the crowdfunding system, after which they released two more cases - Esports 2013 Winter Case and Esports 2014 Summer Case, but the prize pool remained at the same level - $ 250,000.

Tournament	Prize fund	Winners
DreamHack Winter 2013	$250.000	fnatic (Devilwalk, pronax, JW, znajder, flusha)
EMS One Katowice 2014	$250.000	Virtus.pro (Snax, byali, pashaBiceps, NEO, TaZ)
ESL One Cologne 2014	$250.000	NiP (Fifflaren, GeT_RiGhT, Xizt, friberg, f0rest)
DreamHack Winter 2014	$250.000	Team LDLC (shox, NBK, Happy, kioShiMa, SmithZz)

At the very start of this era the best team there was Ninjas in Pajamas in the world. While a small part of the community still believed in CS 1.6, the Swedish team was one of the first to seriously train in CS: GO and was getting ready to perform on the then still emerging pro-scene. Because of this, NiP faced minimal competition at first, since those who came to new game the compositions could not oppose anything to the Swedes due to their inexperience. As a result, it all resulted in a streak of eighty-seven LAN wins in a row for Ninjas in Pajamas. Virtus.pro (kUcher, Dosia, AdreN, Fox, ANGE1) managed to interrupt this victorious procession at the SLTV StarSeries V Finals, but even after that it took the teams a long time to knock NiP off the podium in the CS: GO championship.

Together with development CS: GO the power of Ninjas in Pajamas began to fade. The new teams already knew what to expect from NiP, and it was no longer an overwhelming task to beat the legendary Swedes. This is what led to the fact that, despite its early domination, NiP won the Major only on the third attempt - ESL One Cologne 2014.

In the same period of time, Valve made another important step towards increasing the popularity of its brainchild. Especially for EMS Katowice 2014 (and then for all subsequent majors), the game developers released stickers with the logos of the sixteen teams participating in the tournament. And everyone was happy: ordinary users were happy to decorate their weapons with a sticker, the players received good monetary support (50% of the sale of stickers went to the team), and Valve created a new way of earning money out of the blue.

EMS One Katowice 2014 stickers are among the most expensive items in CS: GO... For example, a Reason Gaming holographic sticker costs about $ 1,800 on the Steam marketplace. And this despite the fact that during the time of the Major in Katowice, such items could be obtained from a capsule that cost only $ 1 ($ 0.25 on sale).

The last word was spoken by DreamHack Winter 2014, where it all started just a year ago. However, there were some scandals here. Players of the Titan and Epsilon Esports teams - KQLY and Sf - got a VAC ban on their Steam account right in front of DHW, as they were caught using cheats. As a result, the organizers disqualified these teams from the fourth Major tournament in history. CS: GO.

Such a sensational discovery did not go unnoticed by the community. Regular viewers began to doubt the honesty of top players and built theories that cheating in LAN tournaments was quite real (and this was later confirmed by player emilio). The players JW, flusha and shox received the most hatred, but there was no evidence of their involvement in the use of the software. A similar "witch hunt" continues to this day on the HLTV forums and sub-reddits / r / GlobalOffensive or / r / VACsucks, but so far there has never been an accurate confirmation that such things do happen.

There were a lot of suspicious moments in matches with Sf and KQLY

The second DH Winter 2014 scandal was more likely the fault of Valve employees. They were well aware of the existence of the problem, which we will now talk about, but did not take any preventive measures in front of DHW. Added to the cheating accusations against fnatic was the way they played in the quarterfinals against Team LDLC. The Swedes made an incredible comeback from 3-13 to 16-13 with a forbidden boost on Overpass. The amount of hatred that fnatic received in their favor was immeasurable. Because of this, the Swedish team later lost their slot in the semifinals, refusing to replay the decisive map in favor of the rivals. And, as it turned out, not in vain. Team LDLC won DH Winter, beating NiP in the grand final and earning the first Major title for the French scene.

Team LDLC with DH Winter 2014 Champion Cup.Photo: GosuGamers

Due to the growth of discipline, the number of tournaments from third-party organizers has increased. So CS: GO has received a lot of support in the development of its pro scene from FACEIT, StarLadder, ESEA, ESL, DreamHack and several others. Especially their influence increased in the second era of major tournaments, which took place in 2015.

Second era

Following the tried and tested path, Valve continued to cooperate with ESL and DreamHack in 2015, holding three majors with them - ESL One Katowice, ESL One Cologne and DreamHack Cluj-Napoca. It is worth noting that no Esports Cases have been released since DHW. Apparently, at that moment Valve decided to personally allocate money for Major events.

Tournament	Prize fund	Winners
ESL One Katowice 2015	$250.000
ESL One Cologne 2015	$250.000	fnatic (olofmeister, KRIMZ, flusha, JW, pronax)
DreamHack Cluj-Napoca 2015	$250.000	Team EnVyUs (kennyS, kioShiMa, apEX, Happy,

Knowing that a fairly large number of players are interested in CS: GO, the organizers of the majors began to hold them on large venues. This, for example, has become the Lanxess Arena, which can accommodate up to 20,000 people. Not surprisingly, ESL Cologne tournaments have become some of the most visited and iconic in history. CS: GO... People from all over the world came to Cologne to personally see how the Major event was going: it added to its atmosphere

Lanxess Arena from the inside

And just this year there was another growth in the number of viewers for the CS: GO majors. Valve released souvenir kits for the new Overpass and Cobblestone maps, which featured some of the most expensive skins in the game. Wanting to get AWP | Dragon Lore or M4A1-S | Masterpiece, viewers watched every match on these maps. However, other, less popular sets were also not deprived of attention, so many viewers watched all the matches in order to earn at least some skins.

In addition, Valve has made an interesting innovation related to stickers. In addition to the team logos, starting with ESL One Cologne 2015, the developers began to issue autograph stickers for each player from the list of Major tournament participants. The 50% rule remained in place for Valve, but now the money went personally into the pockets of esportsmen. Over time, some esports organizations began to regulate this relationship. Noticing how much money the stickers bring, they began to prescribe special clauses in the contracts with the players, according to which deductions will go to the club even from autographs. However, some teams managed to knock out 100% for themselves (not counting Valve's share).

In 2015, we witnessed the formation of many teams, among which are Team SoloMid (today's Astralis), Luminosity Gaming (SK Gaming) and Team Kinguin (FaZe Clan). However, fnatic deserves special attention, as it won two Majors in a row. By signing the duo KRIMZ and olofmeister from LGB Esports (and later also dennis'a), the Swedish team won on almost all fronts. Given the success of fnatic, she will undoubtedly go down in CS: GO history as one of the greatest teams in the pro scene.

Gambling sites like CSGOLounge also made a significant contribution to the development and expansion of the spectator sector of Major tournaments. The skins mania only intensified over time, and players began to place bets with their items on professional matches. Watching whether the bet will pass or not, bettors increased the number of views of matches at third-party tournaments and especially Major events. We can say that sites with betting using skins also positively influenced the development of the CS: GO scene and the game in general.

Therefore, it is not surprising when Valve banned the existence of such sites, tournaments for CS: GO lost most of the audience. But this happened already during the third era of the majors.

Third era

The current era includes three held Major events and one upcoming one - PGL Major Krakow 2017. It all started with MLG Columbus 2016. Unexpectedly for the community, Valve for the first time gave the rights to host major not ESL and DreamHack, but Major League Gaming. And along with this, the prize fund was increased to $ 1,000,000, which later became a common practice.

Tournament	Prize fund	Winners
MLG Columbus 2016	$1.000.000	Luminosity Gaming (FalleN, fnx, TACO, coldzera, fer)
ESL One Cologne 2016	$1.000.000	SK Gaming (FalleN, fnx, TACO, coldzera, fer)
ELEAGUE Major 2017	$1.000.000	Astralis (gla1ve, device, dupreeh, Xyp9x, Kjaerbye)
PGL Major Krakow 2017	$1.000.000	–//–//–

From here a new era began also because, starting with MLG, Columbus Valve introduced a system of regional Minors, in which teams from Europe, CIS, America and Asia without the status of a legend and slots in qualifiers could compete for a slot in LAN qualifiers for a Major.

Participants in the final LAN qualifier for the majors:

8 teams that did not qualify from the group at the last Major;
2 teams from EU Minor;
2 teams from CIS Minor;
2 teams from Asia Minor;
2 teams from Americas Minor.

This system proved to be successful and is consistently applied to all Major events. Many believe that it has its drawbacks, such as causing questions about the distribution of slots among regions, but it seems that Valve is completely satisfied with this situation and the company does not intend to change anything in this regard.

In fact, MLG Columbus can be called one of the best, if not the best Major events in history. CS: GO... There was another peak in viewership, because at that time gambling sites were still alive, the end of the era of fnatic domination (caused by the failure in the quarterfinals and the subsequent injury to the olofmeister's arm), which increased competition in the pro-scene, and the rise of Brazilians from Luminosity Gaming, who came from nowhere and to this day keep at the top level.

Luminosity are MLG Columbus 2016 champions.Photo: Major League Gaming

The problems began just with ESL One Cologne 2016. Valve was unhappy with this event, as it was watched by much fewer viewers than at the previous Major, which indicated an impermissible step back in development. ESL officials said the Cologne event had 1 million viewers, while MLG Columbus reached 1.6 million. As a result, Valve refused to host a third Major in 2016 to whet the audience.

In addition, online viewers were dissatisfied with the quality of the broadcast from ESL, constant delays and a number of other small technical problems... In turn, visitors to the LAN finals at Lanxess Arena did not complain about anything. It is not known if the relationship between Valve and ESL really deteriorated after this, but since then the company has no longer received the rights to host the major. In addition, the situation began to gain momentum and ESL went against the interests of Valve. For example, ESL allowed VAC banned players to play in its leagues after the ban expired. Valve, on the other hand, has cheaters and players who intentionally lost the match, whose guilt was later proven (examples are iBuyPower and Epsilon Esports), receive a lifetime ban from participating in Major events.

Instead, Valve turned its attention to ELEAGUE, which had two great seasons of its CS: GO event. The quality of holding tournaments from EL was at its best, as a result of which ELEAGUE Major 2017 was announced.

And although the organizers held this championship at the highest level, they still failed to break the viewer record. The numbers remained the same - one million at the peak of the broadcast and 670,000 people on average. However, there was also positive side- ELEAGUE Major was watched by almost three times as many people as The International 2016, and twice as many as compared to the World Championship. League of legends(excluding Chinese audience). At the same time, the prize fund of the tournament was twenty times less than that of The International.

In March 2017, PGL announced worldwide that it was organizing the next CS: GO Major. At the moment, PGL managed to hold all Minor-qualifiers and closed LAN-qualifiers, while receiving only positive feedback from the CS: GO-community. For example, you can give the user UI (user interface - user interface), which became a gulp, something new for the field of broadcasting professional CS: GO.

Demonstration of User Interface for CS: GO client from PGL

CS: GO is growing as an esports discipline, increasing its prize money and the number of prestigious tournaments. Beloved by millions, an online shooter needs a boost in development, which PGL can provide. For Valve CS: GO facebook

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Release Counter-Strike: Global Offensive took place on August 21, 2012. A well-known online shooter for a large share of gamers was released on the Steam platform, and its cost was $ 10. Besides, CS: GO also looked at the consoles of the previous generation - Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. Actually, due to the fact that the new game from the Counter-Strike series was originally conceived as a multiplatform, CS: GO so different from CS 1.6 and CS: Source who at that time were living out their last days. Fortunately, Valve later changed its mind and focused on the development and development of the PC version of the game.

First era

Tournament	Prize fund	Winners
DreamHack Winter 2013	$250.000	fnatic (Devilwalk, pronax, JW, znajder, flusha)
EMS One Katowice 2014	$250.000	Virtus.pro (Snax, byali, pashaBiceps, NEO, TaZ)
ESL One Cologne 2014	$250.000	NiP (Fifflaren, GeT_RiGhT, Xizt, friberg, f0rest)
DreamHack Winter 2014	$250.000	Team LDLC (shox, NBK, Happy, kioShiMa, SmithZz)

At the very start of this era, the best team in the world was Ninjas in Pajamas. While a small part of the community still believed in CS 1.6, the Swedish team was one of the first to seriously train in CS: GO and was getting ready to perform on the then still emerging pro-scene. Because of this, NiP faced minimal competition at first, since the rosters that came to the new game could not oppose anything to the Swedes due to their inexperience. As a result, it all resulted in a streak of eighty-seven LAN wins in a row for Ninjas in Pajamas. Virtus.pro (kUcher, Dosia, AdreN, Fox, ANGE1) managed to interrupt this victorious procession at the SLTV StarSeries V Finals, but even after that it took the teams a long time to knock NiP off the podium in the CS: GO championship.

There were a lot of suspicious moments in matches with Sf and KQLY

Team LDLC with DH Winter 2014 Champion Cup.Photo: GosuGamers

Second era

Tournament	Prize fund	Winners
ESL One Katowice 2015	$250.000
ESL One Cologne 2015	$250.000	fnatic (olofmeister, KRIMZ, flusha, JW, pronax)
DreamHack Cluj-Napoca 2015	$250.000	Team EnVyUs (kennyS, kioShiMa, apEX, Happy,

Lanxess Arena from the inside

Therefore, it is not surprising when Valve banned the existence of such sites, tournaments for CS: GO lost most of the audience. But this happened already during the third era of the majors.

Third era

Tournament	Prize fund	Winners
MLG Columbus 2016	$1.000.000	Luminosity Gaming (FalleN, fnx, TACO, coldzera, fer)
ESL One Cologne 2016	$1.000.000	SK Gaming (FalleN, fnx, TACO, coldzera, fer)
ELEAGUE Major 2017	$1.000.000	Astralis (gla1ve, device, dupreeh, Xyp9x, Kjaerbye)
PGL Major Krakow 2017	$1.000.000	–//–//–

Participants in the final LAN qualifier for the majors:

8 teams that did not qualify from the group at the last Major;
2 teams from EU Minor;
2 teams from CIS Minor;
2 teams from Asia Minor;
2 teams from Americas Minor.

Luminosity are MLG Columbus 2016 champions.Photo: Major League Gaming

In addition, online viewers were dissatisfied with the quality of the broadcast from ESL, constant delays and a number of other minor technical problems. In turn, visitors to the LAN-finals at Lanxess Arena did not complain about anything. It is not known if the relationship between Valve and ESL really deteriorated after this, but since then the company has no longer received the rights to host the major. In addition, the situation began to gain momentum and ESL went against the interests of Valve. For example, ESL allowed players with a VAC ban to play in its leagues after the ban expired. Valve, on the other hand, has cheaters and players who intentionally lost the match, whose guilt was later proven (examples are iBuyPower and Epsilon Esports), receive a lifetime ban from participating in Major events.

And although the organizers held this championship at the highest level, they still failed to break the viewer record. The numbers remained the same - one million at the peak of the broadcast and 670,000 people on average. However, there was also a positive side - ELEAGUE Major was watched by almost three times more people than The International 2016, and twice as many in comparison with the World Championship. League of legends(excluding Chinese audience). At the same time, the prize fund of the tournament was twenty times less than that of The International.

In March 2017, PGL announced worldwide that it was organizing the next CS: GO Major. At the moment, PGL managed to hold all Minor-qualifiers and closed LAN-qualifiers, while receiving only positive feedback from the CS: GO-community. For example, the user interface (user interface), which has become a gulp, something new for the field of broadcasting professional CS: GO.

Demonstration of User Interface for CS: GO client from PGL

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