Due to the packed schedule of teams in the coming months, D2L have decided to postpone their fifth season. Instead, they have unveiled to channel their resources into a $50,000 online tournament, the D2L Western Challenge.
The concept was supposedly born because of cramped schedules of the teams on both online and LAN tournaments. Instead of being a long, tolling league, the organizers have decided to make it a condensed competition but with an equally rewarding prize pool.
Eight western teams are invited, and they will be competing with each other in a best-of-three single round-robin. The top six teams after the initial stage will advance into the double-elimination playoffs, with the top two finishers of the group being seeded a round higher. The invited teams are listed below.
The first game is starting not 24 hours from now, with Empire and Evil Geniuses squaring off at 18:00 CET of 1 April (12pm EDT, 00am SGT). The schedule for the rest of the games can be found here. The english stream will be available on D2L's twitch channel and will be cast by Aaron 'Ayesee' Chambers and Mark 'Tralf' Seidi.
The prize pool is an upgrade as well compared to the last season, as this tournament will have an increment from the ticket sales. The ticket is initially marked at $8.99, and is currently not bundled with any in-game item. 80% of the ticket profit, or roughly 20% of the ticket sales, will be added into the prize pool. There is a prize allocated up to the sixth placer. The breakdown of the pool is as follows:
1st Place: $25,000 + 25% of ticket sales increase
2nd Place: $15,000 + 25%
3rd Place: $7,500 + 15%
4th Place: $2,500 + 15%
5th Place: 10% of ticket sales profits
6th Place: 10% of ticket sales profits
D2L's Season 4 had separated eastern and western qualifiers, and it also featured a LAN finale held in Las Vegas, USA. China's LGD won the tournament and took home the lion's share of the $50,000 prize pool. D2L further hints towards an even bigger season five later in the year.
We have tried to reach the organizers to ask for confirmation on this event, and we were informed that this is legitimate. However, wer are still aware that about the general timing of this announcement (April Fools Day), and thus no responsibility is to be held by GosuGamers for any inaccuracies.
