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In 2021, Dota 2’s annual tournament exhibited a prize pool of $47.7 million. It is the highest cumulative prize pool ever recorded in the history of eSports. CounterStrike: Global Offense and Battlegrounds ranked second and third in leading eSport games by cumulative tournament prize pool. Other popular ones such as League of Legends, Fortnite, and Call of Duty managed to accumulate less than $10 million for tournament prize pools in 2021. When did it get this big? where is the money coming from? and how do these players get paid?