Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant passages that answer the question.
Query: When was the first Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship?
ESL Pro League (formerly ESL ESEA Pro League; shortened as EPL) is a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) professional league based in two continents, North America and Europe, currently comprising 26 teams: 14 in Europe and 12 in North America. The EPL is considered to be the premier professional CS:GO league in the world (along with FACEIT's Esports Championship Series) and one of the major professional leagues in eSports. The ESL Pro League began as a venture between ESL (formerly Electronic Sports League) and E-Sports Entertainment Association League (ESEA). Its inaugural season started on May 4, 2015.[1]
Before the release of "Global Offensive" was released in 2012, the Slovak played both "CS" and "CS:S" professionally. He was first introduced to "Counter-Strike" by his brother, who bought the game on a CD when it was not well known at the time.
On September 16, 2013, Valve Corporation announced a 250,000 community-funded prize pool for its first Major; the money was funded through The Arms Deal Update, which offers players in-game items and announced the tournament will take place in Sweden and will be hosted by DreamHack. The tournament took place in late November would later be won by the Swedish team Fnatic. After the 2013 Major, Valve would make the Major a triannual event, with all six Majors featuring the same 250,000 prize pool.
The older a sticker gets, the more expensive it tends becomes as that stickers become rarer to buy and with Valve not releasing any capsules for old tournaments, with an iBUYPOWER holo sticker from Katowice 2014 going for an average of 4,500.
Across the Majors, only fourteen players have attended every Major: Paweł "byali" Bieliński, René "cajunb" Borg, Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth, Jarosław "pashaBiceps" Jarząbkowski, Freddy "KRIMZ" Johansson, Olof "olofmeister" Kajbjer, Filip "NEO" Kubski, Richard "shox" Papillon, Janusz "Snax" Pogorzelski, Peter "dupreeh" Rothmann, Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz, Robin "flusha" Rönnquist, Danylo "Zeus" Teslenko, and Jesper "JW" Wecksell. Of those fourteen, only one has been a Legend every single Major: olofmeister, first with LGB eSports, then with Fnatic, then with FaZe Clan.
"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.
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. 
When Fnatic switched to "Counter Strike: Global Offensive", they became one of the top teams in the world. In order to complete the roster, Fnatic announced that Xyp9x & JOKERN will join them to compete in "Counter Strike: Global Offensive". The team was able to finish in the 3rd/4th position of the EMS Season 1 Finals.
Valve Corporation awarded ESL a Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship for the first time in nearly two and a half years. This tournament will feature twenty-four teams from around the world, fourteen of which were directly invited from their top fourteen placements from the and another ten teams qualifying from their respective regional qualifiers.
On February 23, 2016, with the Major coming up, Valve announced a huge increase in the prize pool at one million dollars. All future Majors would feature the upgraded prize pool. However, Valve would reduce the number of Majors each year from three to two.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) is a multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by Hidden Path Entertainment and Valve Corporation. It is the fourth game in the "Counter-Strike" series and was released for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Xbox 360, and PlayStation 3 in August 2012, with the Linux version released in September 2014. Originally released as a retail product, "Global Offensive" became free to play in December 2018.
Cloud9 formed when Jack Etienne bought the former Quantic Gaming "League of Legends" roster. Following the success of the Cloud9 LoL team in the North American League of Legends Championship Series"," the team was able to expand to field rosters in other esports. In 2015, Cloud9's "Heroes of the Storm" team won the first Heroes of the Storm World Championship, becoming the inaugural winner of the championship. In 2018, Cloud9's Counter-Strike: Global Offensive roster became the first American team to win a major championship, securing a 2-1 victory against FaZe Clan in the ELEAGUE Boston: Major 2018 final.
On December 13, 2017, the general manager of ELEAGUE, the hosts of the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018, Christina Alejandre announced a partially new format designed by Valve and ELEAGUE that would expand the number of team in the Major from sixteen to twenty-four. This would also be the first Major that would take place in more than one city.
As the game and the scene grew in popularity, companies, including WME/IMG and Turner Broadcasting, began to televise "Global Offensive" professional games, with the first being ELEAGUE Major 2017, held in the Fox Theatre and broadcast on US cable television network TBS in 2016. On August 22, 2018, Turner announced their further programming of "Global Offensive" with "ELEAGUE’s Esports 101: CSGO" and "" docu-series on the TBS network.
"Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" received generally positive reception from critics, according to review aggregator Metacritic. Since the game's release, "Global Offensive" has been steadily at the top of the Steam charts in terms of most concurrent players. The game won the fan's choice "eSports Game of the Year" award at The Game Awards 2015.
The "Global Offensive" professional scene consists of tournaments hosted by third-party organisations and Valve-organised or co-sponsored tournaments, referred to as . Majors have larger prize pools; originally set at $250,000, the prize pools for majors have risen, with MLG Columbus 2016 having the first pool of $1,000,000.
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In 2014, the "first large match fixing scandal" in the "Global Offensive" community took place, where team iBuyPower purposefully lost a match against NetCodeGuides.com. The team was later banned by Valve, though ESL unbanned the team from their tournaments in 2017. They are still unable to play in Majors.
DreamHack Open Cluj-Napoca 2015 was the seventh Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Major Championship that was held from October 28–November 1, 2015 at the Sala Polivalentă in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. It was organized by DreamHack with help from Valve Corporation and the Professional Gamers League. The tournament had a total prize pool of $250,000 USD.
"Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" was the fourth release in the main, Valve-developed "Counter-Strike" series in 2012. Much like "Counter-Strike: Source" the game runs on the Source engine. It is available on Microsoft Windows, OSX, and Linux, as well as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 consoles, and is backwards compatible on the Xbox One console.
On February 22, 2018, Valve Corporation, the developers and owners of the Counter-Strike, announced that FACEIT would host the thirteenth Global Offensive major, the , that will start in mid-September and will end on September 23, 2018. It would be the first Major hosted by FACEIT and the first Major hosted in the United Kingdom. It will have a 1,000,000 prize pool and the New Champions stage will be held in Wembley Arena. In the finals, Astralis defeated Natus Vincere for its second Major title.
Prior to Valve being involved with Counter-Strike tournaments, players and organizations had earlier versions of Majors, with the most prominent organizations hosting the Majors being Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), World Cyber Games (WCG), Electronic Sports World Cup (ESWC), World eSports Masters (WEM), and Intel Extreme Masters (IEM). All the earlier Majors were from the first version of Counter-Strike. Swedish teams dominated, most notably SK Gaming, but the roster known as the Golden Five were the most successful lineup. Many other teams from other parts of the world would go on the win championships, such as Team 3D from the United States with CPL Winter 2002 and WCG 2004, NoA from Norway with CPL Winter 2004, mibr from Brazil with ESWC 2006, and WeMade FOX from South Korea with WEM 2010.
Unlike traditional sports or other esports leagues, Valve's policy on a spot in a Major is based on whichever the majority of the players are on rather than the team itself. For instance, at the ELEAGUE Major 2017, Team EnVyUs placed ninth, meaning it would have an automatic berth at the next Major qualifier. However, before the next Major, three of EnVyUs's players transferred to G2 Esports, meaning G2 Esports would take EnVyUs's spot at the qualifier.
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MLG "Counter-Strike: Global Offensive" Major Championship: Columbus, also referred to as MLG Columbus 2016 was the eighth "" held by Major League Gaming (MLG) throughout March 29 to April 3, 2016 in the Nationwide Arena in Columbus, Ohio, US. It was the first "CS:GO" Major in North America as well as the first run by Major League Gaming, who previously ran an exhibition "CS:GO" tournament at X Games Aspen 2015. It was also the very first CS:GO major in which ESL or DreamHack was not the organizer. It was announced on February 23, 2016 that MLG Columbus 2016 would be the first "Counter-Strike" tournament with a $1,000,000 prize pool.