StarCraft 2 is still going strong as an esport in 2019

StarCraft 2 was released just under a decade ago, another decade after the original StarCraft came out. All in all, the game’s popularity and lifespan has far exceeded that of most other esports at this point – and it shows no signs of fading either.

StarCraft 2 is one of the most popular esports in the world still, and more than that, its fascination reaches past just entertainment and even into the world of science. Very recently, a company named DeepMind held a livestream about their work with StarCraft 2 – they are using the game to further their work with AI!

Still, most fans aren’t in it for the science, but rather for the fun of it – and Blizzard is doing its best to keep said fun alive. In fact, the company has only just announced some news about the upcoming competitive season, or more specifically, the StarCraft 2 World Championship Series or WCS for short.

Being focused especially on Korea, the tournament plan will have 8 Koreans facing off against 8 players from the Circuit for a final prize of half a million dollars – these players will be determined in several pre-stages with some pretty impressive prize money all of their own. Between ten and $120.000, each of the stages will help narrow down who will get to compete in the final.

Overall, there will be four Circuit competitions – WCS Winter, Spring, Summer and Fall. At each of them, WCS points will be distributed (the parallel event to this in Korea is the Global StarCraft League) and then there are also two global events, IEM Katowice and GSL vs. The World.

Throughout all of these competitions, players will do their best to accumulate enough points in order to move into the finals and compete for the big prizes. Speaking of big prizes – in addition to the already sizeable winnings available, there is also going to be an additional war chest released later this year to raise the stakes at the grand finals, so stay tuned for more news on that.

The biggest events of the year are, of course, the International ones, where the GSL and Circuit meet up to compete against each other. StarCraft 2 is all but a national sport in Korea, so a lot of extremely skilled players are from there, competing while the rest of the world watches eagerly. The 9th year of the Global StarCraft League will see three seasons of gameplay along with two Super Tournaments and, of course, the other ones we’ve already mentioned.

In other words, plenty of content to watch, enjoy and partake in. Blizzard will be presenting the full tournament in 1080p for the first time, so things will look better than ever before as well – not bad for a game that will celebrate it’s 10th year in 2020.