Today, on the eve of the first-ever Vainglory World Championship, we are announcing four new exciting developments:

The launch of the Vainglory Esports Franchise Program in 2017 The launch of our 2.0 update and winter 2017 season on December 14 The launch of our developer API A team composition tweak at Super Evil Megacorp

But first a look back for a little context.

The end of 2016 sees Vainglory in a fantastic position. Following the path forged by gaming on other platforms over the past decade, mobile gaming is in the middle of a shift from short session stand-alone gaming toward deep, shared experiences. Vainglory is at the forefront of that revolution, becoming the standard bearer for an emerging genre.

In the past 12 months we’ve more than tripled our active player community on Android. Play on mobile phones in particular has exploded after our phone optimizations. We’re also on course to more than triple our esports views to 450 million minutes watched in 2016. We’re helping build a whole new culture of playing together on mobile. We’re excited about how much faster it is happening than the equivalent culture shift in PC gaming 10+ years ago. And that it’s happening on a massive scale on 3Bn+ touchscreens around the world.

Launching our Esports Franchise Program in 2017

At the start of 2016, Vainglory esports was a set of community volunteers organizing tournaments. At the end of 2016, it’s an international multi-tiered network of professional and community tournaments, teams and organizers. Competitive Vainglory is everywhere, from college leagues to amateur tournaments to the top-level Evil Eight competition featuring multi-esports organizations such as TSM, Cloud9, G2 Esports, Mousesports, SK Gaming, Team Secret and more.

For signs of the exceptional health of Vainglory’s esports scene, look no further than Team SoloMid. The successful professional team won both the 2016 Winter Live Championship and the 2016 Summer Live Championship. Now, this trio of full-time pro players has moved into a Las Vegas team house where they can further expand their regimen beyond their 8-10 hour/day practice schedule. Living and playing together allows them to maintain the “bootcamp” atmosphere that has been so successful for them in past domestic and international competitions. Their parents have been “remarkably supportive,” according to team captain FlashX, and this level of commitment — sure to be soon replicated by other top-flight organizations — shows how far the Vainglory professional scene has come in a remarkably short period of time.