PUBG Mobile announced as the eighth title at Esports World Cup
PUBG MOBILE has been announced as the eighth title to feature in the Esports World Cup. The event will step into the annual PUBG Mobile calendar, replacing the World Invitational in KRAFTON’s esports circuit schedule.
The PUBG Mobile World Cup
PUBG MOBILE has announced its participation in the Esports World Cup in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, this summer. The tournament will feature an unchanged $3,000,000 (~£2,400,000) over last year's World Invitational and will be stepping into its slot in the PUBG MOBILE esports schedule.
Replacing the World Invitational, the PUBG MOBILE World Cup is to become the esports' international Midseason event. While the moniker implies a competition between nations much like the FIFA World Cup, the competition, at least in other titles, has been described as more of a top esports club competition.
The best organisations in each respective title will fight each other for points they accrue in each individual game to be added to their total for all their participating teams.
For two years prior, PUBG publisher KRAFTON has been hosting its annual midseason event, the World Invitational in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in cooperation with Gamers8, the esports and gaming festival hosted by the Saudi Esports Federation.
The eighth title
The IESF-hosted event has been announcing participating titles for a while now, with PUBG Mobile becoming its eighth official game. The previously announced titles are Dota 2, StarCraft II, Counter-Strike 2, PlayerUnknown Battlegrounds (PC), and the mobile titles Free Fire, Mobile Legends: Bang Bang, and Honor of Kings.
More titles are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. In January, Riot Games had confirmed that it was in conversation with the EWC about a potential participation of its titles, arguing for the benefit of third-party events in their respective esports calendars.
Sensitivities around the decision regarding the direct connection to the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund had been struck already in 2020, with the European LEC intending to pick up the Saudi Arabian project NEOM as a sponsor, a decision that was walked back amid severe public backlash.
While a definitive date has not been communicated, an approximate window between July and August could be inferred based on press releases other participating titles had previously shared.
