Gods Unchained, a P2E card battler by Australia-based Web3 game studio Immutable, is stepping into the professional esports realm. Several community events have already been held in the game throughout the year to grow the Gods Unchained esports ecosystem, and now the team behind the NFT game with P2E mechanics has stepped up their game. The “Battle for the Light” tournament held earlier this month saw a global event, with participants taking it out on the virtual battlefield for a massive prize pool worth $70,000. Esports have already proven a huge success and a major global phenomenon but are still a rather rare find when it comes to NFT games. Gods Unchained shows how blockchain gaming can have a place in esports.
The global event with a large prize pool
Earlier this year, the team behind Gods Unchained revealed their plans to foray into the space of esports and develop a competitive ecosystem for their free-to-play, play-to-earn game. Introducing the “Gods Unchained Community Clash” initiative, a series of sponsored community events were held. Players from around the globe have been able to take part and fight for their share of prizes, including $GODS (the game’s token), Card Packs, and cash prizes. While these were smaller events marking their first step into the esports space, Gods Unchained leveled up with their first major esports tournament held early in October.
Consisting of two events, their first major esports tournament was co-hosted by Aqua.xyz and had players from around the globe compete. The first part of the tournament, the “Light’s Verdict: Showdown” took place on September 30 and featured content creators facing off, before the main event “Battle for the Light” was held on two days on October 8 and 9. The latter of the two events was open to the entire Gods Unchained community from around the world. The tournament was split into two regional events, one for the Americas and Asia-Pacific and one for EMEA and CIS time zones. All events were streamed live on the Gods Unchained Twitch accounts for everyone to watch.
What makes this event especially noteworthy, is that the P2E card battle in the style of Hearthstone is among the first NFT-based games to hold a major global esports tournament with a large prize pool. The players at the tournament fought for a share of a prize pool worth $70,000, which included USDC, the game’s token $GODS, and card packs.
P2E and the global esports phenomenon
Gods Unchained is a P2E collectible card game based on Immutable X, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain, that makes use of NFT. Matches are played as in many known card battlers, such as Hearthstone or Magic: The Gathering, with players earning new cards as they play and win matches. Each collected card is tokenized, and players can choose which cards they want to keep to build their perfect deck, while unwanted cards can be sold to and traded with other players in a marketplace. With this first major esports tournament, Gods Unchained enters a space where traditional card battlers such as Hearthstone already dominate.
The P2E game is following game industry trends, which have seen major esports tournaments go through the roof within the last decade. Competitive gaming has a massive following, with millions of fans around the globe watching professional players face off on the virtual battlefield in some of the most popular esports games. These events now fill huge stadiums with thousands of fans as pro gamers fight for their share of large prize pools as high as millions of dollars. With that, these competitions have found their place among traditional sports events. Even bookmakers have long taken to the trend and have introduced sports bets on esports tournaments on their betting sites. Many of the most well-known and best-rated betting platforms already offer wagers on some of the major events such as League of Legends, CS:GO, and Dota 2 tournaments. While esports tournaments in P2E games like the recent Gods Unchained event are still comparatively small and not featured on such sites, this may well change in the future as P2E games gain traction in the esports space.
With Gods Unchained “Light’s Verdict: Showdown” and “Battle for the Light”, the NFT-based collectible card game is joining the esports hype. It was only the first major esports tournament for the game, but Gods Unchained is set on further expanding its competitive ecosystem with more tournaments to come.
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- Source: Plato Data Intelligence: Platodata.ai