S1mple Becomes Fifth Highest Earning CS:GO Player in the World

CS:GO teams from the CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States) region have become a force to be reckoned with in the last few years. Leading this pack is the Ukrainian esports organization Natus Vincere (NAVI), which completely dominated the competitive circuit last year and has followed up pretty well despite the circumstances.

Its star player Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev played a huge role in the team's ascent to success, winning awards like 'Best Esports Athlete' at The Game Awards 2021 and 'Esports PC Player of the Year' at the Esports Awards 2021. Not just this, s1mple was also named as the best CS:GO player of 2021 by HLTV and broke the all-time record of most MVP (Most Valuable Player) awards won by a player in a calendar year.

While 2022 has not panned out for the NAVI lineup exactly how they would have wanted it to, s1mple has continued scaling new heights. He became the fifth highest-earning CS:GO player globally in terms of prize money earned as per Esports Earnings.

S1mple becomes the only non-Danish CS:GO player in the top five highest earning players globally

For a long time, the Danish players had kept a tight grip over the top five spots under the category of ‘Prize money won by CS:GO players globally’. Notably, these five players used to play together as a team till a few years ago under the Danish esports organization Astralis. They are:

• Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen

• Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth

• Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz

• Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander

• Emil "Magisk" Reif

_{Note: The players above have been arranged in the descending order of the total prize money earned by them in CS:GO since they started competing professionally.}

The quintet was one of the most dominant CS:GO teams in the history of the game, winning three consecutive Majors to establish an era of its own, etching their names in the annals of CS:GO.

Now, two years later, one of the best players to have ever played the game, s1mple, has managed to move over Magisk, breaking into the top five to become the fifth highest-earning CS:GO player in the world.

The 24-year-old was able to achieve this feat following NAVI's recent 5^th-8^th finish at the ESL Pro League Season 15, which earned the team $42,500 USD in prize money along with 485 EPT (ESL Pro Tour) points and 262.5 BLAST Premier points.

The current top ten highest-earning CS:GO players in terms of prize money are as follows:

1. Peter "dupreeh" Rasmussen - $1,950,081.07 USD

2. Andreas "Xyp9x" Højsleth - $1,938,480.23 USD

3. Nicolai "dev1ce" Reedtz - $1,921,931.54 USD

4. Lukas "gla1ve" Rossander - $1,790,642.41 USD

5. Oleksandr "s1mple" Kostyliev - $1,544,821.98 USD

6. Emil "Magisk" Reif - $1,543,540.30 USD

7. Denis "electronic" Sharipov - $1,398,558.66 USD

8. Jakey "Stewie2k" Yip - $1,186,173.20 USD

9. Gabriel "FalleN" Toledo - $1,138,636.54 USD

10. Finn "karrigan" Andersen - $1,119,302.06 USD

With the amount of success NAVI has achieved last year even the youngest CS:GO player on its active roster, Valerii "b1t" Vakhovskyi, has gone on to become the second highest-earning Ukrainian player right behind s1mple.