By esports, we mean any team competitions in video games. However, not all projects are popular among esportsmen. Local tournaments are held in many online games, but large-scale competitions are held only for popular games. Let’s find out what games have the largest audience in esports and why the number of esports betting is growing.
League of Legends
LOL game is the most popular esports game among Asian players. China and South Korea are leaders in the number of LOL players. The concept of the game is not different from Dota 2. The main task of the players is to destroy the structures of the opponents. Players destroy towers with the help of unique characters, skills, and features. For example, some of the characters in LOL paid, and you can only open them for real money.
The reason for the popularity of League of Legends is difficult to determine. Conceptually it completely copies the idea of Dota 2, but gives it a different angle. As a result, you get the impression that you’re playing something familiar but slightly different. Anyway, the League of Legends is the world’s No. 1 eSports game.
The main League of Legends tournament is the World Championship. The prize fund of the competition in 2021 was $2.2 million, and the maximum online audience of 4 million. The tournament was held in Reykjavík, and the winner was the Chinese team Edward Gaming.
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
This game needs no introduction because everyone knows about its existence, and Counter-Strike is the most popular esports game. Even those who know nothing about eSports have heard about its popularity. CS:GO is an online first-person shooter. Players are divided into two teams – the terrorists and special forces. One must set the bomb, and the second to prevent this or have time to render it harmless.
The concept is the reason for the popularity of the shooter. Winning the match depends solely on the skill of shooting and teamwork. Modern online shooters such as Call of Duty have paid elements that allow players for money to get an advantage over the enemy. In CS:GO, there is nothing of the kind. Players are on an equal footing, and winning the match does not depend on the size of the purse. The fair concept makes Counter-Strike the most popular competitive shooter in the world.
The most popular CS:GO championship is the Major. Due to coronavirus limitations, users waited for it for two years. But in the autumn of 2021, the competition still took place. Team NAVI won. The number of online viewers was 2.74 million people.
Dota 2
Dota 2 is a popular game in Asia, Europe, and the CIS. Its essence is that users are divided into two teams of five players. The main task is to destroy the enemy’s tower with the help of characters with unique abilities, for which users play. The map is divided into two halves by the river, duplicating the location of each object. If there is a tree in one place, it will be located in the same place on the other side. The only difference is the visual design of the sides. The forces of light have a green landscape with trees, and the forces of darkness have a grey landscape with dried-up trees.
There are many reasons for the game’s popularity, from the concept to the presence of team elements, but the game attracts players by its complexity. There are more than a hundred characters in Dota 2. Each of them has several unique abilities, and they combine with the skills of other characters or prevent them. As a result, we have a situation when a gamer has played hundreds of hours but still doesn’t know the peculiarities of each character. Also, Dota 2 is considered the most team-based eSports game. The victory in the match depends not only on the players’ skill but also on teamwork.
The main Dota 2 championship is The international. It’s also the most expensive eSports tournament in the world. Its prize fund in 2021 was more than $ 40 million, which is a record in the history of the gaming industry. The maximum number of online viewers was 2.7 million people.
Fortnite
Fortnite game is popular in Europe and the United States. Attributing it to a particular genre is quite difficult. First, it was a survival simulator with construction elements, and now it is a royal battle, multiplayer quest, cooperative action in an open world, etc. But all of the above are united by the building constructions present in each mode. For example, by launching a Royal Battle, you can build a multi-story building in the center of the field and fire on the enemy from it.
The construction mechanic is a distinctive feature of Fortnite. Battles with other users do not look like the usual firefights but like an attempt to create a “counter-building” to find the enemy an open area to fire on. The animated graphics make the game deceptively simple. But in reality, Fortnite is a complex esports game where building skill becomes the main factor in winning.
The reason for the game’s popularity is the Battle Royale mode. In 2017, the Battle Royale genre gained popularity – projects with this mode did not work well at first. They had bugs, poor optimization, and a lot of technical issues. Fortnite: Battle Royal was the first Battle Royale that worked consistently. That’s when the game caught the attention of the mass player audience.
The main Fortnite competition is the Twitch Rivals Streamer Bowl. At the same time, its numbers of viewers are more modest relative to previous popular esports games. The peak of online viewers was 294 thousand. The number of spectators is directly related to the project’s popularity, which is interested only in Europe and North America. Previous tournaments are extremely common in Asia, where the population is many times larger.
PUBG
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds is the most popular game in the Battle Royal genre. It is competed only by Call of Duty: Warzone. However, if we add the mobile version of PUBG esports, there is no competition. The essence of the game is to remain the sole survivor on the map and become the winner. In the beginning, players jump out of a plane and land on a deserted island. They must find weapons as soon as possible and start fighting other users.
Its popularity is that PUBG is the first shooter in the battle royale genre. Of course, similar projects such as DayZ or H1Z1 have existed before. However, PUBG was the first game where survival happens between people without zombies.
The most popular tournament is PUBG Global Invitational. By various estimates, the maximum online was 6 million people, and the total prize pool of more than $7 million. In March 2021, the competition was held in South Korea, and the winner was the Soniqs team from the United States.
