With a total prize pool of over $10 million Dota 2’s The International 4 tournament is the most important event in E-Sports history. Given this huge success, Valve is taking into consideration the possibility of creating something similar for another one of their games, Counter-Strike. Although the FPS is not as popular as it once was, CS did make a comeback with the release of Global Offensive and currently has a pretty large player base. While it’s doubtful that Counter-Strike, or any other game for that matter could match The International 4’s record prize pool that doesn’t mean that a CS tournament wouldn’t be successful in its own right.

“I don’t know if it would be called The International, but the guys working on Counter-Strike made a lot of progress on supporting the professional community around that game,” Valve’s Erik Johnson revealed in an interview with Prodota.ru. “We all work at the same company and share a lot of ideas, and given how successful this tournament [The International] has become I don’t see any reason why a lot of the same things couldn’t be applied directly to Counter-Strike.” Johnson also goes on to say that “We don’t have anything to announce right now, but as a company there’s a lot of data as to how well the community has responded to The International and how it’s grown. It would be pretty difficult to ignore for any game team.”

A major Counter-Strike tournament is unlikely to draw as much attention as the The International 4 but it will definitely help E-Sports as a whole. Aside from the Dota 2 event, there are only a handful of other important competitions that could be considered highly popular. Some examples would be the League of Legends World Championships and Starcraft 2’s WCS and Dreamhack. There are also some World of Warcraft and Hearthstone tournaments here and there. E-Sports has been growing steadily in recent years, but a few more major gaming competitions wouldn’t hurt, right?

If E-Sports would have been as popular as they are now 10 years ago Counter-Strike would have been the best candidate for something like The International. Now there seem to be few players who take shooters seriously and are able to play them at a competitive level. However, with enough money in play I’m pretty certain that people around that world would start flocking in to see what all the fuss is about. We’ll just have to wait and see if Valve can convince enough competitive players to join in on the fun. As for a possible major Counter-Strike tournament, I’m almost certain there will indeed be one soon enough even if the company doesn’t want to confirm it just yet.