2014 EMS One Katowice CS:GO Championship

[keithlewis]

Counter-Strike Community Builds $250,000 Prize Pool for Ems one Katowice Championship


Valve, creators of best-selling game franchises (such as Dota 2, Half-Life, Left 4 Dead, Portal, and Team Fortress) and leading technologies (such as Steam and Source), have announced a $250,000 community-funded prize pool for the 2014 EMS One Katowice CS:GO Championship sponsored by Intel and Asus.

Taking place inside the famous Spodek indoor stadium at the IEM in Katowice, the upcoming CS:GO tournament will follow the progress of DreamHack Winter 2013's eight quarter-finalists, who will be joined by eight qualifying teams from ESL's EMS One Online Qualifiers. The event's matches will be streamed live via continuous high-quality coverage provided by ESL, with the championship match showcased on the Intel Extreme Masters Main Stage in front of thousands of fans.

The CS:GO crowd-funding initiative began in August, 2013 with the release of The Arms Deal Update, which offers players in the community special in-game items. A portion of the sales revenue from those items is then placed into a tournament prize fund.

Through this initiative the Counter-Strike community will have funded two events, each among the largest cash awards in Counter-Strike's history. The first community-sponsored event, The 2013 DreamHack SteelSeries CS:GO Championship, generated record-breaking audiences with over 145,000 concurrent viewers for the grand final and 350,000 unique viewers across the multi-day event.

The previous Intel Extreme Masters stop in Katowice hosted one of the most successful eSports events in history, attracting 50,000 of visiting fans and millions of viewers worldwide.

For more information about CS:GO and the Arms Deal Update please visit the Update Page at http://blog.counter-strike.net/armsdeal/

For more information about the 2014 EMS One Katowice CS:GO Championship, please visit http://www.csgo-emsone.com/katowice-2014/