It’s funny how things have changed in the gaming world and how tournaments became such a big sensation. Last decade when neither cryptocurrency was taken seriously and when eSports didn’t get much coverage, teams who didn’t make it into the top 4 were actually given bitcoins as a reward during a StarCraft Tournament. We can only look at those events now and laugh thinking how drastically things have changed. Today, being an eSports player is one of the top-earning jobs. Moreover, gaming tournaments are massive events, and here we are going to talk about some of the biggest eSports competitions in the world.

League of Legends World Championship

League has been around for more than 11 seasons and it’s one of the games that pioneered the eSports expansion. Riot has definitely invested a lot into making League popular by creating songs, hiring celebrities to promote this event, and now there is even a Netflix series that is about the lore of the game. The most famous team is of course SK Telecom T1 and their captain is none other than Faker.

Anyone who plays League of Legends loves the World Championship torment as they get to enjoy truly spectacular plays. However, in the beginning, the Korean championship was actually a competition where people could see the best matches because even the teams that didn’t qualify for the world championship from Korea were better than those from other countries. Riot continues to add changes to the games, and new champions to the roster, which allows for the game to continue being interesting and unpredictable.

The most recent championship was supposed to take place in China, but due to Covid restriction, it was moved to Iceland.

Intel Extreme Masters Katowice CS: GO

Intel Extreme Masters or IEM is another very popular eSports tournament, and they also host League of Legends competitions. However, it is known as one of the biggest Counter-Strike tournaments.

Counter-Strike went through a lot of changes and hurdles on its road to success and even suffered criticism that it promoted gambling to children. There are in fact CS-related games that took a leaf out of the fastest payout online casino platforms and made their own skin wagering game. Instead of real money though you get weapon skins as a reward, and those can be traded and sold for real cash, which is what created the whole scandal. Still, this is another old-school game that withstood the test of time, and now they have some of the biggest tournament prizes in the world.  In 2021 torment CS players were sharing the prize pool of 1 million dollars.

The Fortnite World Cup

Fortnite is still relatively new, as it was released in July 2017, yet it really took the world by surprise. The game grew rapidly in spite of big competition in the Battle Royale game category. Fortnite had a more cartoonish design, something that was closer to the wheres the gold pokies casino games than to a game about soldiers on the battlefield. The first tournament was held in 2019, but it seems that we won’t be getting an in-person torment in the year 2021 due to the COVID pandemic. Still, there will be an online competition that fans can watch on Twitch and YouTube.

The Six Invitational

This is one of the most recent and at the same time the most memorable eSports tournaments. Players are competing in Ubisoft’s Rainbow Six Siege and the first tournament will be held in 2020. It was truly spectacular and they did have a competition in 2021 as well. The winner was Ninjas in Pyjamas. The prize pool was 3 million dollars which shows that the developers are serious about the competition and want to attract talented eSports players.

The International DOTA 2

If we talk about big eSports competitions it doesn’t get bigger than The International. Dota 2 tournaments were always known for their generous prize pools, and 2021 was no exception. The winner of the tournament was Team Spirit and their reward was almost 19 million dollars, whereas the total prize pool was over 40 million. DOTA started as a game made in the Warcraft 3 editor that League of Legends copied, and then Valve released it as a stand-alone game called DOTA 2. It is regarded as the best MOBA game, and as you can see DOTA players are probably the highest-paid gamers.

Conclusion

Regardless of what sports fans think, gaming or eSports have become a real competition. Sure the players aren’t exactly athletes but there are long hours of training, player transfers, betting options, even match-fixing scandals, just like with soccer competitions. Some argue that these competitions took the fun out of gaming for those professional players, but that’s not necessarily true. A lot of pros are streamers and coaches, and already have enough money that they don’t have to bother with these games if they don’t want to, so their passion is genuine.