Esports World Cup (EWC) Foundation this week revealed five additional games that will be part of the inaugural Esports World Cup this summer in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. From battle royales like PUBG to tactical and first-person titles like Rainbow Six Siege and Overwatch 2, along with popular mobile games Garena Free Fire and PUBG MOBILE, the newly announced lineup showcases the breadth of the shooter genre and its fandom.
The five game titles revealed today will be featured on the EWC’s growing schedule alongside previously announced five titles, including Counter-Strike 2, Dota 2, Honor of Kings, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and StarCraft II. This brings the total number of announced titles to date to ten and adds to the broad range of genres that will be available at the Summer 2024 competition.
EWC will host these communities later this year for a global competition that will crown the first-ever Esports World Cup Club Champion. The cross-game competition will reward Clubs’ success in individual games and offer additional prizes for the teams that perform best across the breadth of EWC tournaments. Participating Clubs will compete across a mix of platforms and genres that will connect the esports fans, teams, and publishers in new ways and create the largest-ever celebration of esports.
“First-person and tactical shooters are a cornerstone of gaming and esports and played by billions internationally,” said Ralf Reichert, CEO, Esports World Cup Foundation. “We’re bringing together all the best games, including these titles and the rest of our competitions, to connect an unprecedented variety of global communities. We’re excited to have them be a part of this first-of-its-kind event.”
The latest collection of titles recognizes the history of shooters in esports and their ability to offer immersive and compelling entertainment for players and fans alike. This includes Rainbow Six Siege, the flagship title of the iconic first-person shooter franchise that was first released more than 25 years ago. This February, the Six Invitational 2024 broke the franchise records in both viewership and fan attendance, with more than 9,000 passionate fans and 521,323 viewers online watching the Grand Final.
PUBG, a third-person and first-person title that played a pivotal role in the success of battle royale games, will be played across both PC and mobile platforms at EWC. The PUBG MOBILE Global Championship Season 0 holds the record as the fourth most-watched esports tournament with over 3.8 million peak viewers, and the game has put forward $136 million in prize winnings across both mobile and PC competitions since the launch of the 2017 PC version. PUBG Global Championship 2023 Grand Finals, held in Bangkok, Thailand, also set a new all-time concurrent viewership record on its opening day.
Since its release in 2016, Overwatch has cultivated a far-reaching, diverse, and multinational audience thanks to an innovative style of team gameplay that holds a unique place in the FPS category. Overwatch 2, the successor to the original game, boasts passionate fans at a global scale, and the title’s newly launched Overwatch Champions Series esports ecosystem will serve as an opportunity for EWC qualification.
Garena Free Fire, behind the accessibility and advancement of mobile devices, has built a global fan base and esports ecosystems that allow players to compete for championship titles anywhere a 5G signal is available. The battle royale title is one of the world’s most played and most downloaded mobile games, with more than 200 million monthly users on mobile devices last year. It also put on the most-viewed mobile esports tournament, with a peak concurrent viewership of 5.4 million fans tuning in to watch the Free Fire World Series in 2021.
EWC revealed the latest participating publishers and games on social media through a mix of CGI videos and graphics that captured each game’s unique IP and the regions that have been integral to their esports history, including:
Rainbow Six Siege (Paris, France) Overwatch 2 (Toronto, Canada) Garena Free Fire (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) PUBG: Mobile (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia) PUBG (Gyeongju, South Korea)
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