Tournaments
In Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, in addition to normal tournament circuits hosted by third-party organisations, Valve organizes or co-sponsors a series of events itself, referred to as 'majors'. These events are special in that they have large prize pools, which are crowdfunded by the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive community via in-game keys bought to open in-game cases,[33][34] and special in-game cosmetics - usually in the form of stickers of the qualified teams logo, and signatures of qualified players[35] that can be applied to guns or used to predict the results of the tournament - are introduced into the game, and are purchasable from Valve during the duration of the tournament.[36][37][38]
As of October 27, 2015, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments have awarded over $7.5 million in prize money, with nearly $2 million won by Swedish players.[39][dubious – discuss] The top 5 countries in earnings are, in order, Sweden, France, Poland, Denmark, and The United States.