114-510: Michele Attisani FACEIT is an esports platform founded in London in 2012. The company has administered leagues for games such as Counter-Strike 2 , League of Legends , Rocket League , Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Siege , Dota 2 and Team Fortress 2 . In 2022, it was announced that FACEIT and esports company ESL were being acquired by Savvy Games Group (SGG), a holding company owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund , for
228-686: A lawsuit against Epic in South Korea in January 2018 claiming Fortnite Battle Royale infringements on Battlegrounds ' copyrights . Market observers predicted that there would be little likelihood of Bluehole winning the case, as it would be difficult to establish the originality of PUBG in court due to itself being derived from Battle Royale . By the end of June 2018, the lawsuit had been closed by PUBG, under undisclosed reasons. In 2018, Fortnite Battle Royale rivaled Battlegrounds in player numbers and surpassed it in revenue, which
342-423: A mind sport . Former ESPN president John Skipper described esports in 2014 as a competition and "not a sport". In 2013 on an episode of Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel the panelist openly laughed at the topic. In addition, many in the fighting games community maintain a distinction between their competitive gaming competitions and the more commercially connected esports competitions of other genres. In
456-743: A battle royale mobile game , Btooom Online , based on the 2009 manga Btooom , was developed and released in Japan. Despite some initial success on the Japanese mobile charts, Btooom Online was ultimately a commercial failure in Japan. While formative elements of the battle royale genre had been established before 2017, the genre grew from two principal titles through 2017 and 2018: PUBG: Battlegrounds , which soon inspired Fortnite Battle Royale . Both games drew tens of millions of players in short periods of time, proving them as commercial successes and leading to future growth after 2018. H1Z1: King of
570-604: A combined $ 1.5bn. As part of the acquisition, the two companies are set to merge and form the ESL FACEIT Group. In April 2016, FACEIT announced the launch of their Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournament, known as the Esports Championship Series (ECS). In April 2017, the company partnered with the video sharing platform YouTube for the series. ECS was one of the two premier Counter-Strike leagues, along with ESL Pro League . The series
684-700: A high score record-keeping organization. The organization went on to help promote video games and publicize its records through publications such as the Guinness Book of World Records, and in 1983 it created the U.S. National Video Game Team . The team was involved in competitions, such as running the Video Game Masters Tournament for Guinness World Records and sponsoring the North American Video Game Challenge tournament. A multicity tour in 1983,
798-424: A large market, the law raised concerns about the future of esports within the country. Labeling competitive video games as a sport is a controversial topic. Proponents argue that esports are a fast-growing "non-traditional sport" which requires "careful planning, precise timing, and skillful execution". Others claim that sports involve physical fitness and physical training, and prefer to classify esports as
912-435: A large open-world map were popularized through survival games . The 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale , along with Koushun Takami 's earlier 1999 novel of the same name and its 2000 manga adaptation , set out the basic rules of the genre, including players being forced to kill each other until there is a single survivor, taking place on a shrinking map, and the need to scavenge for weapons and items. It soon inspired
1026-606: A marketing stunt to promote their early arcade snake game Hustle in the United States, involving the "Gremlin Girls" who were a duo of professional female arcade players called Sabrina Osment and Lynn Reid. The pair travelled across 19 American cities, where players could challenge them in best-of-three matches for a chance to win money. The duo were challenged by a total of 1,300 players, only about seven of whom managed to beat them. The golden age of arcade video games
1140-457: A medal event at the 2022 edition ; esports around games such as Hearthstone , Starcraft II , and League of Legends were presented as an exhibition event at the 2018 Asian Games as a lead-in to the 2022 games. The 2019 Southeast Asian Games included six medal events for esports. Since 2018, World Sailing has held an eSailing World Championship that showed a main sports federation embracing esports. The Virtual Regatta race shadowing
1254-624: A million dollars to FACEIT users. On 22 February 2018 Valve , the developers and owners of the Counter-Strike series , announced that FACEIT would host the thirteenth Global Offensive major, the FACEIT Major: London 2018. The event began in mid-September and concluded on 23 September 2018. It was the first Major hosted by FACEIT and the first Major hosted in the United Kingdom . It had a US$ 1,000,000 prize pool and
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#17327796047621368-473: A new genre called "chicken-eating game", named based on the congratulatory line to the last player standing in Battlegrounds , " Winner Winner Chicken Dinner! " The rapid growth and success of the battle royale genre has been attributed to several factors, including the way all players start in the same vulnerable state and eliminating any intrinsic advantage for players, and being well-suited for being
1482-565: A new partnership with their National Olympic Committee . The proposal was ultimately approved by a unanimous vote on 23 July 2024. A number of games are popular among professional competitors. The tournaments which emerged in the mid-1990s coincided with the popularity of fighting games and first-person shooters , genres which still maintain a devoted fan base. In the 2000s, real-time strategy games became overwhelmingly popular in South Korean internet cafés , with crucial influence on
1596-497: A number of small squads (typically of 3-5 players). In each match, the goal is to be the last player or team standing by eliminating all other opponents. A match starts by placing the player-characters into a large map space, typically by having all players skydive from a large aircraft within a brief time limit. The map may have random distribution or allow players to have some control of where they start. All players start with minimal equipment, giving no player an implicit advantage at
1710-582: A paid television model renamed GIGA II from June 2006 to autumn 2007. The French channel Game One broadcast esports matches in a show called Arena Online for the Xfire Trophy. The United States channel ESPN2 hosted Madden NFL competitions in a show called Madden Nation from 2005 to 2008. DirecTV broadcast the Championship Gaming Series tournament for two seasons in 2007 and 2008. CBS aired prerecorded footage of
1824-899: A part of video game culture , but were largely between amateurs until the late 2000s, when the advent of online streaming media platforms, particularly YouTube and Twitch , enabled a surge in participation by professional gamers and spectators. By the 2010s, esports was a major part of the video game industry, with many game developers designing for and funding for tournaments and other events. Esports first became popular in East Asia , particularly in China and South Korea (which first licensed professional players in 2000) but less so in Japan , whose broad anti-gambling laws prohibit professional gaming tournaments. Esports are also popular in Europe and
1938-547: A potential method to legitimize esports. A summit held by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in October 2017 acknowledged the growing popularity of esports, concluding that "Competitive 'esports' could be considered as a sporting activity, and the players involved prepare and train with an intensity which may be comparable to athletes in traditional sports" but would require any games used for
2052-473: A spectator esport. Other factors including specific games' business models, such as Fortnite Battle Royale being free and available across computers, consoles, and mobile devices. A University of Utah professor also considers that battle royale games realize elements of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs , a scheme to describe human motivation, more-so than video games have in the past. While the lowest tiers of Maslow's hierarchy, physiological and safety, are met by
2166-552: A total playerbase of 45 million in January and 3.4 million concurrent players in February. Polygon labeled it "the biggest game of 2018" and "a genuine cultural phenomenon", with "everyone from NFL players to famous actors" playing it, including Red Sox player Xander Bogaerts and Bayern Munich 's youth team borrowing celebrations from the game. In Asia , however, PUBG remains the most popular battle royale game. Other popular battle royale games released in 2017, inspired by
2280-508: A tournament held by several video game publishers to award prizes to many players but with JeSU offering these exemption licenses to the top dozen or so players that emerge, allowing them to compete in further esports events. The Tokyo Olympic Committee has also planned to arrange a number of esports events leading up to the 2020 games. With the IOC, five esports events were set as part of an Olympic Virtual Series from 13 May to 23 June 2021, ahead of
2394-590: A wave of battle royale themed Japanese manga and anime , such as Gantz (2000), Future Diary (2006), and Btooom! (2009), and then the battle royale formula eventually appeared in The Hunger Games franchise. Fictional battle royale video games were depicted in Btooom! , and in the Phantom Bullet ( Gun Gale Online ) arc of the light novel series Sword Art Online (2010 in print) as
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#17327796047622508-403: Is 50-versus-50 player mode in its Fortnite Battle Royale free-to-play game; players are assigned one of the two teams, and work with their teammates to collect resources and weapons towards constructing fortifications as the safe area of the game shrinks down, with the goal to eliminate all the players on the other team. Formulative elements of the battle royale genre had existed prior to
2622-638: Is a 2019 game released by Nintendo for the Nintendo Switch that has 99 players simultaneously competing in a game of Tetris . Players can direct "attacks" on other players for each line they complete, attempting to remain the last player standing. Tetris 99 served as a template for the Switch games Super Mario Bros. 35 , Pac-Man 99 , and F-Zero 99 . Blizzard Entertainment added a battle royale-inspired "Battlegrounds" mode to its digital card game Hearthstone , where eight players vie to win over
2736-540: Is also thought that the high unemployment rate at the time caused many people to look for things to do while out of work. Instrumental to this growth of esports in South Korea was the prevalence of the Komany-style internet café / LAN gaming center , known as a PC bang . The Korean e-Sports Association , an arm of the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism , was founded in 2000 to promote and regulate esports in
2850-431: Is an online multiplayer video game genre that blends last-man-standing gameplay with the survival, exploration and scavenging elements of a survival game . Battle royale games involve dozens to hundreds of players, who start with minimal equipment and then must eliminate all other opponents while avoiding being trapped outside a shrinking "safe area", with the winner being the last player or team alive. The name for
2964-408: Is over when only one player or team remains, and the game typically provides some type of reward, such as in-game currency used for cosmetic items, to all players based on how long they survived. The random nature of starting point, item placement, and safe area reduction enables the battle royale genre to challenge players to think and react quickly and improve strategies throughout the match as to be
3078-514: Is the civilized expression about this. If you have egames where it's about killing somebody, this cannot be brought into line with our Olympic values." Due to that, the IOC suggested that they would approve more esports centered around games that simulate real sports, such as the NBA 2K or FIFA series. The issues around esports have not prevented the IOC from exploring what possibilities there are for incorporation into future Olympics. In July 2018,
3192-704: The 2020-2021 Vendee Globe was the first online game believe to have in excess of 1,000,000 unique users Ahead of The International 2021 , which was originally set to take place in Stockholm in 2020, the Swedish Sports Confederation voted in June 2021 to deny recognition of esports as a sporting event, which jeopardized plans for how Valve had arranged the event in regards to travel visas for international players. Valve had tried to work with Sweden to accommodate players, but eventually rescheduled
3306-542: The 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris were in discussions with the IOC and the various professional esports organizations to consider esports for the event, citing the need to include these elements to keep the Olympics relevant to younger generations. Ultimately, the organization committee determined esports were premature to bring to the 2024 Games as medal events, but have not ruled out other activities related to esports during
3420-476: The Battle Royale formula into a shooter game format. Shortly after the release of the 2012 film The Hunger Games , which had a similar premise to Battle Royale , a server plug-in named Hunger Games (later changed to Survival Games) was developed for Minecraft . Survival Games takes inspiration from the film, initially placing players at the center of the map near a set of equipment chests. When
3534-557: The Chinese government revamped how it reviewed and classified games that are to be published in China, and by December 2018, after the formation of the new Online Ethics Review Committee, several battle royale titles, including Fortnite and PUBG , were listed as prohibited or must be withdrawn from play. While PUBG Corporation was working with Tencent on a Chinese release, many clones of Battlegrounds were released in China, and created
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3648-518: The Commonwealth Games Federation announced that esports would be included in the 2022 Commonwealth Games as a pilot event, with the possibility of it being a medal event in the 2026 Games . The inaugural Commonwealth Esports Championship had separate branding, medals, and organization and included both men and women's Dota 2 , eFootball , and Rocket League events. As a follow-up to 2021's Olympic Virtual Series,
3762-700: The Nintendo PowerFest '94 . There were 132 finalists that played in the finals in San Diego , California. Mike Iarossi took home 1st prize. Blockbuster Video also ran their own World Game Championships in the early 1990s, co-hosted by GamePro magazine. Citizens from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, and Chile were eligible to compete. Games from the 1994 championships included NBA Jam and Virtua Racing . Television shows featuring esports during this period include
3876-551: The Tokyo Olympic Games Committee for the 2020 Summer Olympics, four esports organizations have worked with Japan's leading consumer organization to exempt esports tournaments from gambling law restrictions. Takeo Kawamura , a member of the Japanese House of Representatives and of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party , led a coalition of ruling and opposing politicians to support esports, called
3990-617: The digital collectible card game (DCCG) genre since its release in 2014. While it is common for video games to be designed with the experience of the player in game being the only priority, many successful esports games have been designed to be played professionally from the beginning. Developers may decide to add dedicated esports features, or even make design compromises to support high level competition. Games such as StarCraft II , League of Legends , and Dota 2 have all been designed, at least in part, to support professional competition. Battle royale game A battle royale game
4104-671: The eGames , was held alongside the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro , though this was not supported by the IOC. During the Eighth Olympic Summit in December 2019, the IOC reiterated that it would only consider sports-simulating games for any official Olympic event, but it would look at two paths for such games in the future: those that promoted good physical and mental health lifestyles, and virtual reality and augmented reality games that included physical activity. In
4218-464: The "Bullet of Bullets" tournament. Initial attempts at adapting the Battle Royale formula into video games came in the form of Japanese visual novel games that focused on storytelling and puzzle-solving, such as Higurashi: When They Cry (2002), Zero Escape (2009) and Danganronpa (2010). However, these visual novel games are distinct from the genre which became known as battle royale games, which emerged when Western developers later adapted
4332-441: The "Electronic Circus", was used to feature these players in live challenges before audiences, and draw more people to video games. These video game players and tournaments were featured in well-circulated newspapers and popular magazines including Life and Time and became minor celebrities at the time, such as Billy Mitchell . Besides establishing the competitive nature of games, these types of promotional events all formed
4446-568: The 1990s led to the foundation of the international Evolution Championship Series (EVO) esports tournament in 1996. Large esports tournaments in the 1990s include the 1990 Nintendo World Championships , which toured across the United States, and held its finals at Universal Studios Hollywood in California. Nintendo held a 2nd World Championships in 1994 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System called
4560-471: The 2007 World Series of Video Games tournament that was held in Louisville, Kentucky . The G4 television channel originally covered video games exclusively, but broadened its scope to cover technology and men's lifestyle, though has now shutdown. During the 2010s, esports grew tremendously, incurring a large increase in both viewership and prize money. Although large tournaments were founded before
4674-422: The 2010s. Gameplay modes featuring last man standing rules has been a frequent staple of multiplayer online action games, though generally with fewer total players, as early as 1990's Bomberman , which introduced multiplayer game modes with players all starting with the same minimal abilities who collected power ups and fought until the last player was left standing. The elements of scavenging and surviving on
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4788-578: The 2015 World Championship hosted by the International Esports Federation , an esports panel of guests from international sports society discussed the future recognition of esports as a legitimate sport. Russia was the first country that classified "cybersport" as an official sport discipline on 25 July 2001. After a series of reforms in Russian sports, it was classified as a sport again on 12 March 2004. In July 2006, it
4902-561: The 21st century, the number and scope of tournaments has increased significantly, going from about 10 tournaments in 2000 to about 260 in 2010. Many successful tournaments were founded during this period, including the World Cyber Games , the Intel Extreme Masters , and Major League Gaming . The proliferation of tournaments included experimentation with competitions outside traditional esports genres. For example,
5016-520: The Americas , which host regional and international events. The most common video game genres associated with esports are multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA), first-person shooter (FPS), fighting games , card , battle royales , and real-time strategy (RTS) games. Popular esports franchises include League of Legends , Dota , Counter-Strike , Valorant , Overwatch , Street Fighter , Super Smash Bros. and StarCraft . Among
5130-748: The British shows GamesMaster and Bad Influence! ; the Australian game show A*mazing , where in the final round contestants competed in a video game face-off; and the Canadian game show Video & Arcade Top 10 . In the 1990s, many games benefited from increasing internet connectivity , especially PC games . Inspired by the fighting games Street Fighter II , Fatal Fury and Art of Fighting , id Software 's John Romero established competitive multiplayer in online games with Doom ' s deathmatch mode in 1993. Tournaments established in
5244-608: The French government started working on a project to regulate and recognize esports. The Games and Amusements Board of the Philippines started issuing athletic licenses to Filipino esports players who are vouched for by a professional esports team in July 2017. To help promote esports as a legitimate sport, several esports events have been run alongside more traditional international sports competitions. The 2007 Asian Indoor Games
5358-647: The Games. In September 2021, the Olympic Council of Asia announced eight esports games will officially debut as medal sports for the 2022 Asian Games in Hangzhou, China. In December 2021, the IOC confirmed its Olympic Virtual Series (OVS) will return in 2022. The first edition of the OVS which ran from 13 May to 23 June, featured nearly 250,000 participants and had more than two million entries. In January 2022,
5472-521: The IOC and the Global Association of International Sports Federations (GAISF) held a symposium and invited major figures in esports, including Epic Games ' Mark Rein , Blizzard Entertainment 's Mike Morhaime , and esports players Dario "TLO" Wünsch, Jacob "Jake" Lyon , and Se-yeon "Geguri" Kim , for these organizations "to gain a deeper understanding of esports, their impact and likely future development, so that [they] can jointly consider
5586-709: The IOC and the Singapore National Olympic Council held the inaugural Olympic Esports Week in Singapore in June 2023. Games featured at the event included: In June 2024, the IOC Executive Board announced the proposal to establish the Olympic Esports Games during the 142nd IOC Session held prior to the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, with the inaugural event to take place in 2025 at Saudi Arabia following
5700-516: The IOC announced the appointment of the organization's first ever head of virtual sport, tasked with the development of virtual sport for the global Olympic body, increasing the organization's engagement with gaming communities, and overseeing the Olympic Virtual Series, IOC's first licensed non-physical sports event. The inaugural series included virtual baseball, cycling, rowing, esailing and motorsports events. In February 2022,
5814-465: The Japan esports Union, or JeSU. Kawamura said that they would be willing to pass laws to further exempt esports as needed so that esports athletes can make a living playing these sports. So far, this has resulted in the ability of esports players to obtain exemption licenses to allow them to play, a similar mechanism needed for professional athletes in other sports in Japan to play professionally. The first such licenses were given out in mid-July 2018, via
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#17327796047625928-603: The Kill, which predated these two titles in the genre, had become a fixture in the top most played games on Steam by the start of 2017, but was not able to maintain its playerbase. PUBG: Battlegrounds was created by Brendan Greene, its title based on his online alias "PlayerUnknown". The game was based on his previous Battle Royale mod for ARMA 2 and DayZ first released in 2013. Building on his earlier work, Greene went to work at Bluehole in South Korea , becoming
6042-490: The Ministry stating that they anticipate over 2 million such people in this profession in five years. In 2013, Canadian League of Legends player Danny "Shiphtur" Le became the first pro gamer to receive an American P-1A visa , a category designated for "Internationally Recognized Athletes". In 2014, Turkey's Ministry of Youth and Sports started issuing esports licenses to players certified as professionals. In 2016,
6156-513: The Olympics fitting "with the rules and regulations of the Olympic movement". Another article by Andy Stout suggests that 106 million people viewed the 2017 Worlds Esports competition . International Olympic Committee (IOC) president Thomas Bach has noted that the IOC is troubled by violent games and the lack of a global sanctioning body for esports. Bach acknowledged that many Olympic sports originated from violent combat, but stated that "sport
6270-502: The September 2006 FUN Technologies Worldwide Webgames Championship featured 71 contestants competing in casual games for a $ 1 million grand prize. The popularity and emergence of online streaming services have helped the growth of esports in this period, and are the most common method of watching tournaments. Twitch , an online streaming platform launched in 2011, routinely streams popular esports competitions. In 2013, viewers of
6384-623: The battle royale genre expanded greatly. Major publishers, including Electronic Arts Activision , and Ubisoft acknowledged the impact of the growing genre on their future plans and on the industry as a whole. Activision's Call of Duty series features a battle royale mode titled Blackout in its 2018 installment, Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 , as does EA's Battlefield V . Other established games added battle royale-inspired game modes in updates, such as Grand Theft Auto Online , Paladins , Dota 2 , Battlerite , and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive . In February 2019, EA released
6498-470: The competition. In 2015, the first Esports Arena was launched in Santa Ana, California , as the United States' first dedicated esports facility. The global esports audience reached 662.6 million in 2020, and 921 million in 2022. In 2021, China announced a law which forbade minors from playing video games, which they described as "spiritual opium", for more than three hours a week. With China being
6612-505: The concept of direct, tournament-level competition between two players. Previously, video games most often relied on high scores to determine the best player, but this changed with Street Fighter II , where players would instead challenge each other directly, "face-to-face", to determine the best player, paving the way for the competitive multiplayer and deathmatch modes found in modern action games . The popularity of fighting games such as Street Fighter and Marvel vs. Capcom in
6726-552: The country. Physical viewership of esports competitions and the scope of events have increased in tandem with the growth of online viewership. In 2013, the Season 3 League of Legends World Championship was held in a sold-out Staples Center . The 2014 League of Legends World Championship in Seoul , South Korea, had over 40,000 fans in attendance and featured the band Imagine Dragons , and opening and closing ceremonies in addition to
6840-731: The country. Minister of Culture, Sports, and Tourism Park Jie-won coined the term "Esports" at the founding ceremony of the 21st Century Professional Game Association (currently Korean e-Sports Association ) in 2000. " Evo Moment 37 ", also known as the "Daigo Parry", refers to a portion of a Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike semi-final match held at Evolution Championship Series 2004 (Evo 2004) between Daigo Umehara (playing Ken Masters ) and Justin Wong (playing Chun-Li ). During this match, Umehara made an unexpected comeback by parrying 15 consecutive hits of Wong's "Super Art" move while having only one pixel of vitality . Umehara subsequently won
6954-905: The creation of the Halo Championship Series and a prize pool of US$ 50,000. Both Blizzard Entertainment and Riot Games have their own collegiate outreach programs with their North American Collegiate Championship. Since 2013 universities and colleges in the United States such as Robert Morris University Illinois and the University of Pikeville have recognized esports players as varsity level athletes and offer athletic scholarships . In 2017, Tespa , Blizzard Entertainment's collegiate esports division, unveiled its new initiative to provide scholarships and prizes for collegiate esports clubs competing in its tournaments worth US$ 1 million. Colleges have begun granting scholarships to students who qualify to play esports professionally for
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#17327796047627068-452: The creative developer of a standalone game representing his vision of the battle royale genre, PUBG: Battlegrounds . While Battlegrounds was not the first battle royale game, its release to early access in March 2017 drew a great deal of attention, selling over twenty million copies by the end of the year, and is considered the defining game of the genre. In September 2017, the game broke
7182-399: The development of esports worldwide. Competitions exist for many titles and genres, though the most popular games as of the early 2020s are Counter-Strike: Global Offensive , Call of Duty , League of Legends , Dota 2 , Fortnite , Rocket League , Valorant , Hearthstone , Super Smash Bros. Melee , StarCraft II and Overwatch . Hearthstone has also popularized
7296-491: The double-digits by May 2018, leading Outpost to announce the game's closure by November 2018. While several major battle royale announcements occurred at E3 in 2018, only Fallout 76 ' s battle royale mode appeared at the trade show in 2019. The Chinese government , through its Audio and Video and Numeral Publishing Association, stated in October 2017 that it will discourage its citizens from playing battle royale games as they deem them too violent, which "deviates from
7410-448: The early 2010s, viewership was about 85% male and 15% female, with most viewers between the ages of 18 and 34. By the late 2010s, it was estimated that by 2020, the total audience of esports would grow to 454 million viewers, with revenue increasing to more than US$ 1 billion, with China accounting for 35% of the global esports revenue. The earliest known video game competition took place on 19 October 1972 at Stanford University for
7524-826: The end of 2019. SuperData Research reported that, in 2018 , the three top-grossing battle royale games ( Fortnite , PUBG and Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 ) generated nearly $ 4 billion in combined digital revenue that year. SuperData Research reported that the top four highest-grossing battle royale games of 2020 ( PUBG Mobile , Garena Free Fire , Call of Duty: Warzone and Fortnite ) generated more than $ 7 billion worldwide in combined digital revenue that year. Fortnite grossed over $ 9 billion worldwide by 2019, while PUBG Mobile grossed over $ 8 billion by early 2022. Sensor Tower reported that 2018's top three most-downloaded mobile battle royale games ( PUBG Mobile , Garena Free Fire and Fortnite ) received over 500 million downloads combined that year. As of 2020 ,
7638-498: The esports scene, Nintendo hosted Wii Games Summer 2010. Spanning over a month, the tournament had over 400,000 participants, making it the largest and most expansive tournament in the company's history. In 2014 Nintendo hosted an invitational Super Smash Bros. for Wii U competitive tournament at the 2014 Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) press conference that was streamed online on Twitch. Halo developers 343 Industries announced in 2014 plans to revive Halo as an esport with
7752-430: The event to Romania instead. The 2022 Commonwealth Games featured esports competitions as a pilot ahead of being a potential full medal event for 2026. In Greece , in March 2022 a law entered into force recognising and regulating esports and in June 2023, the relevant federation for esports has been officially given recognition and included in the list of sports federations. The Olympic Games are also seen as
7866-631: The free-to-play Apex Legends , which exceeded 50 million player accounts within a month. The second main battle royale installment in the Call of Duty franchise, titled Call of Duty: Warzone , was released in March 2020, as a part of the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare video game but does not require purchase of it; the game reached more than 50 million players in its first month of release. The battle royale approach has also been used in games from genres not normally associated with shooter games. Tetris 99
7980-438: The fundamental gameplay of Battlegrounds appeared in China , shortly after Battlegrounds ' release. Epic Games had released Fortnite , a cooperative survival game, into early access near the release of Battlegrounds . Epic saw the potential to create their own battle royale mode, and by September 2017, released the free-to-play Fortnite Battle Royale which combined some of the survival elements and mechanics from
8094-410: The game Spacewar . Stanford students were invited to an "Intergalactic spacewar olympics" whose grand prize was a year's subscription for Rolling Stone , with Bruce Baumgart winning the five-man-free-for-all tournament, and Slim Tovar and Robert E. Maas winning the team competition. Contemporary esports has roots in competitive face-to-face arcade video game competitions. A forerunner of esports
8208-496: The game commences, players can compete over the central resources or spread out to find items stored in chests scattered around the play area. Players killed are eliminated and the last surviving player wins the match. In DayZ , a mod for Arma 2 , released in August 2012, players struggle alongside or against each other to obtain basic necessities to continue living in a persistent sandbox filled with various dangers. The mod
8322-488: The game progresses, usually taking the form of a gradually shrinking safe zone, with players outside the zone facing elimination. Typically, battle royale contestants are only given one life , and any players who die are rarely allowed to respawn . Games with team support may allow players to enter a temporary, not permanent, near-death state once health is depleted, giving allies the opportunity to revive them before they give out or are finished off by an opponent. The match
8436-550: The game. Babble Royale is a game developed by Frank Lantz that uses Scrabble as a basis for a word-based battle royale game. As of December 2019 dozens of battle royale games have debuted but, similar to the MOBA genre, only two or three titles have maintained mainstream popularity at the same time. Other games and battle royale modes had briefly become popular before their concurrent player count dropped and players returned to Fortnite or Battlegrounds ; Apex Legends
8550-709: The games. Each event in auto racing, baseball, cycling, rowing and sailing will be managed by an IOC-recognized governing body for the sport along with a video game publisher of a game for that sport. For example, the auto racing event will be based on the Gran Turismo series and overseen by the International Automobile Federation along with Polyphony Digital . The baseball, cycling, and esailing events will be based on eBaseball Powerful Pro Baseball 2020 , Zwift , and Virtual Regatta , respectively. The organization committee for
8664-728: The genre is taken from the 2000 Japanese film Battle Royale , itself based on the novel of the same name , which presents a similar theme of a last-man-standing competition in a shrinking play zone. The genre's origins arose from mods for large-scale online survival games like Minecraft and ARMA 2 in the early 2010s. By the end of the decade, the genre became a cultural phenomenon, with standalone games such as PUBG: Battlegrounds (2017), Fortnite Battle Royale (2017), Apex Legends (2019) and Call of Duty: Warzone (2020) each having received tens of millions of players within months of their releases. Battle royale games are played between many individual players, pairs of players, or
8778-524: The government encouraged esports, stating that by participating in esports, players were also "training the body for China". Furthermore, by early 2019, China recognized esports players as an official profession within the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security 's Occupation Skill Testing Authority recommendations, as well as professional gaming operators, those that distribute and manage esports games. By July 2019, more than 100,000 people had registered themselves as professional gamers under this, with
8892-405: The last man/team standing. In addition to standalone games, the battle royale concept may also be present as part of one of many game modes within a larger game, or may be applied as a user-created mod created for another game. There are various modifications that can be implemented atop the fundamentals of the battle royale. For example, Fortnite introduced a temporary mode in an event which
9006-690: The late 1990s include the Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL), QuakeCon , and the Professional Gamers League . PC games played at the CPL included the Counter-Strike series, Quake series, StarCraft , and Warcraft . The growth of esports in South Korea is thought to have been influenced by the mass building of broadband Internet networks following the 1997 Asian financial crisis . It
9120-409: The late 2010s, leaders in Japan became involved in helping bring esports to the 2020 Summer Olympics and beyond, given the country's reputation as a major video game industry centre. Esports in Japan had not flourished due to the country's anti-gambling laws that also prevent paid professional gaming tournaments, but there were efforts starting in late 2017 to eliminate this issue. At the suggestion of
9234-812: The main Fortnite game with the Battle Royale gameplay concept. The game saw similar player counts as Battlegrounds , with twenty million unique players reported by Epic Games by November 2017. Bluehole expressed concern at this move, less due to being a clone of Battlegrounds , but more so that they had been working with Epic Games for technical support of the Unreal Engine in Battlegrounds , and thus they were worried that Fortnite may be able to include planned features to their battle royale mode before they could release those in Battlegrounds . Battleground 's developer, PUBG Corporation , filed
9348-428: The map. Greene recreated this mod for Arma 3 in 2014. Greene continued to use his format as a consultant for H1Z1: King of the Kill before becoming the creative developer at Bluehole of a standalone game representing his vision of the battle royale genre, which would later be released as PUBG: Battlegrounds . Games from other developers took inspiration from highly played battle royale-style mods, as well as
9462-523: The match. "Evo Moment #37" is frequently described as the most iconic and memorable moment in the history of competitive video gaming. Being at one point the most-watched competitive gaming moment of all time, it has been compared to sports moments such as Babe Ruth's called shot and the Miracle on Ice . In April 2006, the G7 teams federation were formed by seven prominent Counter-Strike teams. The goal of
9576-757: The most popular tournaments are the League of Legends World Championship , Dota 2 's International , the fighting game-specific Evolution Championship Series (EVO) and Intel Extreme Masters . Many other competitions use a series of league play with sponsored teams, such as the Overwatch League . Although the legitimacy of esports as a true sporting competition remains in question, they have been featured alongside traditional sports in some multinational events in Asia. The International Olympic Committee has discussed their inclusion in future Olympic events. In
9690-471: The most-played battle royale games include PUBG Mobile with 600 million players, Fortnite with 350 million players, NetEase 's mobile game Knives Out with over 250 million players, Rules of Survival with 230 million players, and Garena Free Fire with over 180 million players. Turtle Beach Corporation , a manufacturer of headphones and microphones for gaming, reported an increase of over 200% in net revenues for
9804-421: The nature of the marketing and promotion that formed the basis of modern esports. In 1984, Konami and Centuri jointly held an international Track & Field arcade game competition that drew more than a million players from across Japan and North America. Play Meter in 1984 called it "the coin-op event of the year" and an "event on a scale never before achieved in the industry". As of 2016 , it holds
9918-582: The onset. Equipment, usually used for combat, survival or transport is randomly scattered around the map, often at landmarks on the map, such as within buildings in ghost towns . Players need to search the map for these items while avoiding being killed by other players, who cannot be visually marked or distinguishable either on-screen or on the map, requiring the player to solely use their own eyes and ears to deduce their positions. Equipment from eliminated players can usually be looted as well. These games often include some mechanic to push opponents closer together as
10032-457: The organization was to increase stability in the esports world, particularly in standardizing player transfers and working with leagues and organizations. The founding members were 4Kings , Fnatic , Made in Brazil , Mousesports , NiP , SK-Gaming , and Team 3D . The organization only lasted until 2009 before dissolving. The 2000s was a popular time for televised esports. Television coverage
10146-409: The others through several rounds of drafting new cards and fighting in one-on-one events. The racing game Forza Horizon 4 from Playground Games added a battle royale mode called "The Eliminator" where players all start with the same car, but can gain upgrades by beating other players and discovering "drops" around the map; Microsoft stated in 2021 that it was the most popular multiplayer mode in
10260-467: The platform watched 12 billion minutes of video on the service, with the two most popular Twitch broadcasters being League of Legends and Dota 2 . During one day of The International, Twitch recorded 4.5 million unique views, with each viewer watching for an average of two hours. The modern esports boom has also seen a rise in video games companies embracing the esports potential of their products. After many years of ignoring and at times suppressing
10374-543: The playoff stage was held in Wembley Arena . In the finals, Astralis defeated Natus Vincere to win its second Major title. Esports Esports ( / ˈ iː s p ɔːr t s / ), short for electronic sports , is a form of competition using video games . Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, played individually or as teams. Multiplayer competitions were long
10488-578: The plot of various films, including 1982's Tron . In the UK, the BBC game show First Class included competitive video game rounds featuring the contemporary arcade games, such as Hyper Sports , 720° and Paperboy . In the United States, the Amusement Players Association held its first U.S. National Video Game Team competition in January 1987, where Vs. Super Mario Bros.
10602-467: The popularity of The Hunger Games film series . Ark: Survival Evolved by Studio Wildcard introduced its "Survival of the Fittest" mode in July 2015, which was geared to be used for esports tournaments. The mode was temporarily broken off as its own free-to-play game during 2016 before the developers opted to merge it back into the main game for ease of maintenance of the overall game. In 2016,
10716-409: The previous record for highest number of concurrent players on Steam , with over 1.3 million users playing the game simultaneously. Battlegrounds ' explosive growth and how it established the battle royale genre was considered one of the top trends in the video game industry in 2017. Battlegrounds ' popularity created a new interest in the battle royale genre. Numerous games that copied
10830-537: The record for the largest organized video game competition of all time, according to Guinness World Records . Televised esports events aired during this period included the American show Starcade which ran from 1982 to 1984 airing a total of 133 episodes, on which contestants would attempt to beat each other's high scores on an arcade game. A video game tournament was included as part of TV show That's Incredible! , and tournaments were also featured as part of
10944-513: The release of Battlegrounds , The Culling lost much of its player base, and a few months after releasing the full version of the game, Xaviant announced they were ending further development on it to move onto other projects. Radical Heights by Boss Key Productions was launched in April 2018 but within two weeks had lost 80% of its player base. SOS , a battle royale game released by Outpost Games in December 2017, had its player counts drop into
11058-419: The school. Colleges such as Columbia College , Robert Morris University , and Indiana Institute of Technology have taken part in this. In 2018, Harrisburg University of Science and Technology began a tuition scholarship program for esports players. In 2014, the largest independent esports league, Electronic Sports League , partnered with the local brand Japan Competitive Gaming to try and grow esports in
11172-418: The success of PUBG: Battlegrounds , include two NetEase titles, Rules of Survival which was discontinued on 2022 July and the mobile game Knives Out , and the mobile game Free Fire by Garena which has over 150 Million daily active players as of 2021. Each of these games has received hundreds of millions of downloads, mostly in Asia, by 2018. With the success of Battlegrounds and Fortnite ,
11286-417: The survival elements of battle royales, the love/belonging and esteem tiers are a result of the battle royale being necessarily a social and competitive game, and the final tier of self-actualization comes from becoming skilled in the game to win frequently. Business Insider projected that battle royale games would bring in over $ 2 billion during 2018 alone, and would generate a total of $ 20 billion by
11400-506: The tournament "proved to be the biggest event ever" in the arcade game industry, and was attended by members from leading Japanese newspapers and leisure industry companies. Sega stressed "the importance of such tournaments to foster better business relationships between the maker-location-customer and create an atmosphere of competition on TV amusement games". In 1977, Gremlin Industries (a year before being acquired by Sega) held
11514-551: The values of socialism and is deemed harmful to young consumers", as translated by Bloomberg . Gaming publications in the west speculated that this would make it difficult or impossible to publish battle royale within the country. In November 2017, PUBG Corporation announced its partnership with Tencent to publish the game in China, making some changes in the game to "make sure they accord with socialist core values, Chinese traditional culture and moral rules" to satisfy Chinese regulations and censors. However, during mid-2018,
11628-564: The ways in which [they] may collaborate to the mutual benefit of all of sport in the years ahead". The IOC has tested the potential for esports through exhibition games. With support from the IOC, Intel sponsored exhibition esports events for StarCraft II and Steep prior to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang , and five South Korean esports players were part of the Olympic Torch relay. A similar exhibition showcase,
11742-449: Was attributed to its free-to-play business model and cross-platform support, as well as its accessibility to casual players . Battlegrounds creator Brendan Greene credited it with further growing the battle royale genre. Its mainstream publicity further increased following a stream by Tyler "Ninja" Blevins with Drake , JuJu Smith-Schuster and Travis Scott . which set a Twitch record for concurrent viewership. It accumulated
11856-480: Was best established in South Korea, with StarCraft and Warcraft III competitions regularly televised by dedicated 24-hour cable TV game channels Ongamenet and MBCGame . Elsewhere, esports television coverage was sporadic. The German GIGA Television covered esports until its shutdown in 2009. The United Kingdom satellite television channel XLEAGUE.TV broadcast esports competitions from 2007 to 2009. The online esports only channel ESL TV briefly attempted
11970-470: Was created by Brendan Greene, known by his online alias " PlayerUnknown ", whose Battle Royale mod of DayZ first released in 2013. This mod was directly inspired by Battle Royale , and introduces concepts from the film such as a shrinking play zone that forces players into closer proximity as the game goes on. In contrast to Hunger Games -inspired mods, in Greene's mod weapons were randomly scattered around
12084-403: Was designed to include player versus player encounters, but generally these events were infrequent due to the size of the game's map and the persistence of the game world. This led to the development of game mods that sacrificed DayZ open-endedness in favor of focusing on more frequent hostile interactions between players to determine an eventual winner. The most influential battle royale mod
12198-524: Was discontinued in 2020, replaced by a franchise-based league called Flashpoint. It features 12 teams and a US$ 2,000,000 buy in spot, and offers co-ownership and revenue sharing to competing teams. In May 2022, FACEIT announced a multi-million dollar partnership agreement with the cryptocurrency fintech platform Cake DeFi. The agreement sees players participating in FACEIT matchups and tournaments to receive cryptocurrency rewards, with plans to pay more than half
12312-633: Was held by Sega in 1974, the All Japan TV Game Championships, a nationwide arcade video game tournament in Japan. The tournament was intended by Sega to promote the play and sales of video games in the country. There were local tournaments held in 300 locations across Japan, and then sixteen finalists from across the country competed in the final elimination rounds at Tokyo 's Hotel Pacific. Prizes awarded included television sets ( color and black-and-white ), cassette tape recorders and transistor radios . According to Sega,
12426-462: Was heralded by Taito 's Space Invaders in 1978, which popularized the use of a persistent high score for all players. Several video games in the next several years followed suit, adding other means of tracking high scores such with high score tables that included the players' initials in games like Asteroids in 1979. High score-chasing became a popular activity and a means of competition. The Space Invaders Championship held by Atari in 1980
12540-498: Was popular among competitive arcade players. The 1988 game Netrek was an Internet game for up to 16 players, written almost entirely in cross-platform open-source software . Netrek was the third Internet game , the first Internet game to use metaservers to locate open game servers, and the first to have persistent user information . In 1993 it was credited by Wired Magazine as "the first online sports game". The fighting game Street Fighter II (1991) popularized
12654-434: Was removed from a list of sport disciplines because it did not fit the new sport standards. On 7 July 2016, The Ministry of Sport decided to add cybersport into the sport registry and on 13 April 2017, esports become an official sport discipline once again. China was another one of the first countries to recognize esports as a real sport in 2003, despite concerns at the time that video games were addictive. Through this,
12768-516: Was the earliest large scale video game competition, attracting more than 10,000 participants across the United States, establishing competitive gaming as a mainstream hobby. It was won by Rebecca Heineman . Walter Day , owner of an arcade in Iowa, had taken it upon himself to travel across the United States to record the high scores on various games in 1980, and on his return, founded Twin Galaxies ,
12882-692: Was the first notable multi-sport competition including esports as an official medal-winning event, alongside other traditional sports, and the later editions of the Asian Indoor Games , as well as its successor the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games , have always included esports as an official medal event or an exhibition event up to now. Moreover, the Asian Games , which is the Asian top-level multi-sport competition, also included esports as
12996-450: Was the year's only new successful battle royale game. In contrast to other multiplayer-only games, the large number of players typically involved in battle royale games generally require a large enough concurrent player base for matchmaking in a reasonable amount of time. The Culling , by Xaviant Studios, was released in early access in 2016, and was designed to be a streaming-friendly battle royale mode for 16 players. However, following
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