Mitrobe StaffFortnite And Dota 2 Pay The Price For A Pandemic In 2020
No game was exempt from the effects and fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, with every game in the industry either housing their events in bio-secure studio environments, from the comfort or from safety of the players’ homes or organisation’s own buildings. Either way, the world of Esports has missed the feeling of fans packing the rafters just as much as anything else in the world of real world sports or entertainment.
The pandemic has also led to widespread cancellations of huge annual Esports events, with both CS:GO majors being cancelled being amongst the most high profile casualties. However, the most successful titles throughout the year were the ones who found a way of adapting to the new landscape and offered online events for the fans to satisfy themselves with. CS:GO and League of Legends, the two biggest Esports events pre-pandemic, arguably pumping out even more tournaments this year than before.
Two Esports games that weren’t so fortunate this year however were Fortnite and Dota 2.
Both these games had been viewed as arguably the two best-placed sides to challenge the hegemony of CS:GO and League of Legends at the top of the Esports pyramid pre-pandemic, but their lack of developed competitive scenes and investments from the same amount of organisers as the two titans in the industry has seen them take a serious step backwards over the course of 2020.
- Dota 2
We’ll start with Dota 2.
Having been a game on the decline for a good couple of years heading into 2020, falling by the wayside as its biggest rival, League of Legends, rode the wave higher and higher as the industry continued to thrive. Already second to League in terms of active player bases, Valve Corporation simply haven’t been able to match the partnerships and spectacles guaranteed with events such as the annual Worlds tournament establishing themselves as the biggest events in the industry.
Dota 2 had actually seen a couple of spikes in its following the outbreak of COVID-19, breaking a near-three year old record when it hit 750,000 active players in March and April this year. Dota 2 betting at sites such as Unikrn.com saw a major resurgence during this time thanks to the likes of ESL One Birmingham events going ahead with an online format.
However, the flagship event of the Dota 2 competitive scene is undoubtedly the annual International competition. Four of the top five biggest prize pools in Esports history have belonged to various editions of The International over the years, and the tournament is so ingrained into the very fabric of the Dota 2 community.
Unfortunately for the game’s competitive scene, the 2020 International (which is part sponsored by Valve Corporation like the CS:GO Majors which were also cancelled) was indefinitely delayed in April. Valve indicated that it might be until August 2021 until fans will even have a chance to see the event from an online platform, let alone packing out the stands in their thousands as they had done before.
- Fortnite
The cultural phenomenon of the past few years in the video gaming world, few games have gained the level of worldwide attention as Epic Games’ Fortnite. The game has been dominated by the emergence of high profile influencers, ranging from the likes of Ninja to real world sports stars such as Mesut Ozil or Sergio Aguero.
Given the lucrative value of the game, its sheer amount of influence it carries in the mainstream and the huge amount of players it currently boasts, Fortnite has always been touted as a possible Esport titan in the making. In 2019, it launched it’s very first ever Fortnite World Cup held in New York in August.
The event boasted a prize pool of over $35 million split across the tournament’s three variants, solos, doubles and creative, which made it at the time the biggest Esports event of all time. The 2020 edition was intended to be the next in the cycle and the hype pre-lockdown was unlike any other event scheduled for the year. Unfortunately, hedging all your bets on one major event per year leaves you open to external disruptions being even more damaging, and that is sadly the case with what happened to Fortnite and its 2020 edition of the World Cup.
The game will continue to be a serious hit in the mainstream, however there’s no denying that not having a high profile competitive event for nearly two years could very easily dismantle the progress its Esports scene was making.
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Mitrobe Staff