Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is an online multiplayer game which pits two teams, the Terrorists and the Counter-Terrorists, against each other in a fight for survival. First released in August 2012, the game has become a commercial and critical success. It won the fan’s choice eSports Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2015 and, most recently, generated revenue of 414 million U.S. dollars worldwide in 2018.
Counter Strike on Steam
CS:GO is the fourth game in the Counter-Strike series and was released on both PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 as well as on PC. It is most commonly played on the PC gaming platform Steam, where it ranks second on the list of all-time best-selling games. Due to its multiplayer nature, the game often attracts large numbers of gamers at once - its record high peak concurrent player number on Steam was registered in April 2016, at nearly 850.5 thousand gamers playing at the same time. Despite now being several years old, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive has still managed to retain a loyal fan base. The game had over 20 million monthly active users at the beginning of 2019, a huge increase from the 2.2 million playing in February 2014.
Big money at stake
As a result of the fast-paced and exciting nature of the game, Counter-Strike has also become a hit eSports game. ELEAGUE Major, a CG:GO championship which took place in Boston in 2018, was viewed by a peak of nearly 1.9 million viewers, making it the most watched CS:GO tournament in 2018. The number of viewers engrossed in the action is no doubt increased by the significant sums of money on the line. The cumulative prize pool for Global Offensive tournaments worldwide in 2018 stood at a record 22.65 million U.S. dollars. It seems that it pays to be good at video games and nobody knows this more than Andreas Højsleth, also known as Xyp9x, who has won an estimated 1.32 million U.S. dollars through his Counter-Strike: Global Offensive eSports career.
