Video gamers from the e-sports team "Evil Geniuses" won the fifth annual Dota 2 International Championships on Saturday, winning the prize of $6.6 million.
The champions fought against the Chinese Dota Elite Community team known to e-sport fans as "CDEC." Evil Geniuses won with a score of three games to one in the finals at Seattle's Key Arena.
The entire event started with 16 teams who fought their way to the finals for almost a week.
The whole event had a total prize pool of $18 million, having grown from the $1 million prize the tournament started with back in 2011. The pool has grown because of the game's growing popularity, as 25 percent of the proceeds from purchases related to the game go to the prize pool for the tournament, Venture Beat reported.
The video game industry has become a moneymaker for the tech sector, forecasting this year to generate $111 billion in revenue, according to consultants Gartner Inc., Yahoo! News reported.
Playing video games has required full-time focus over the past several years, thus becoming a job for the selected few top-tier players, especially those driven by the growing prize pools of tournaments.
Players and teams came to the U.S. from China, South Korea, Ukraine, Russia and elsewhere to compete in the tournament.
