The first major Auto Chess championship was the World Championship from the developers of the game. The million dollar prize pool was played among 32 participants. The best of them received $450,000, but did that kind of money succeed in attracting ordinary viewers? Let's talk about this.

The creation of Drodo Studio is the original heir to the custom Dota 2 mod, which subsequently spawned a whole genre of autobattlers. The team of creators refused the offer of Valve and created their own separate game. With the help of ImbaTV, they also held the first World Championship for their chess.

In the article, we will not only summarize the results of the Auto Chess Invitational, but also compare it with its direct rivals – Dota Underlords and TeamFight Tactics. Representing the Valve's game will be a tournament called WePlay! Dota Underlords Open. At the same time, Rise of the Elements Invitational will represent the TFT side.

But first, let's talk about the tournament from Drodo and ImbaTV – namely, how it was received by the Western fans (since we are not taking the data of Chinese viewers into account). Despite the large prize pool and the presence of the original game, the championship did not manage to gain popularity.

Auto Chess Invitational has gathered 8 thousand peak viewers and 3 thousand average viewers on its broadcasts. The organizers have broadcasted the event in seven languages total Japanese, English, Vietnamese, Korean, Chinese and Indonesian. Vietnamese stream has become the most popular out of these.

When comparing Auto Chess Invitational with its direct rivals, the situation becomes even more terrible. Peak viewers of WePlay! Dota Underlords Open was greater by 111%, while for Rise of the Elements Invitational the same parameter was more than 10 times greater +950%.

This means that while it is still possible for Auto Chess to compete with Valve's game, facing TFT becomes a problem – due to several factors at once. At the very least, the developers were late with the release of the PC version. While TFT was becoming universally known, Drodo's chess was setting foothold only on the mobile platforms. On the other hand, this made the project popular in Vietnam – the country of mobile gaming.

At the same time, the product’s advertising campaign has flopped. In this aspect, Riot Games once again becomes the most exemplary among the three. During the release of the mode, nearly every major channel was broadcasting TeamFight Tactics. Auto Chess and Dota Underlords had no such activities.

As a result, the game's first World Championship became a big failure. The prize pool of one million dollars did not contribute to the interest of western viewers, which is why the event has shown an extremely unsatisfactory performance.