World Electronic Sports Games (WESG) is an international
esports
Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although orga ...
championship
In sport, a championship is a competition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is the champion.
Championship systems
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
Title match system
In this system ...
tournament based in
Shanghai
Shanghai (; , , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ) is one of the four direct-administered municipalities of the People's Republic of China (PRC). The city is located on the southern estuary of the Yangtze River, with the Huangpu River flow ...
and organized by
AliSports.
The first edition has a total prize pool of over . The finals were held in December 2016.
The World Electronic Sports Games heavily bases itself on the
Olympic Games
The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...
. In the first 3 years, teams had to be composed of players of the same nationality to emphasize national pride, making it unique in the
esports
Esports, short for electronic sports, is a form of competition using video games. Esports often takes the form of organized, multiplayer video game competitions, particularly between professional players, individually or as teams. Although orga ...
world. As a result of this, some national teams were formed only to play in WESG. This rule was softened for the 2019 edition (and possibly onwards), with teams being allowed to have 2 foreign members.
The event also has separate tournaments for men and women. Tournaments generally follow
single-elimination
A single-elimination, knockout, or sudden death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of each match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final matc ...
rules.
Games
The following games were featured.
In 2017, WESG expanded ''
Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'' and ''
Hearthstone
''Hearthstone'' is a free-to-play online digital collectible card game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Originally subtitled ''Heroes of Warcraft'', ''Hearthstone'' builds upon the existing lore of the ''Warcraft'' series by u ...
'' to include female tournaments.
*''
Counter Strike
''Counter-Strike'' (''CS'') is a series of multiplayer tactical first-person shooter video games in which teams of terrorists battle to perpetrate an act of terror (bombing, hostage-taking, assassination) while counter-terrorists try to preven ...
''
*''
Dota 2
''Dota 2'' is a 2013 multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) video game by Valve. The game is a sequel to ''Defense of the Ancients'' (''DotA''), a community-created mod for Blizzard Entertainment's '' Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos.'' ''Dota 2' ...
''
*''
Hearthstone
''Hearthstone'' is a free-to-play online digital collectible card game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Originally subtitled ''Heroes of Warcraft'', ''Hearthstone'' builds upon the existing lore of the ''Warcraft'' series by u ...
''
*''
Starcraft II
''StarCraft II'' is a military science fiction video game created by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the successful ''StarCraft'' video game released in 1998. Set in a fictional future, the game centers on a galactic struggle for dominance a ...
''
Tournament history
2016
As of March 2016, qualifying rounds for the first edition were expected to begin in April 2016.
The event took place in Shangai.
Despite the large prize pools, many top contenders were not at the event, especially with CS:GO's first major of 2017 right around the corner. WESG 2016 for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO) was the last premier tournament before the
ELEAGUE Major 2017. France's Team EnVyUs beat out Poland's Team Kinguin to take home the majority of CS:GO's biggest prize pool while Poland's number one took third place by defeating Turkey's
Space Soldiers before booking a ticket to
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,715 ...
for the major.
In Dota 2, the Filipino team TNC Pro Team downed Denmark's Cloud9 to take the grand prize.
Alliance
An alliance is a relationship among people, groups, or states that have joined together for mutual benefit or to achieve some common purpose, whether or not explicit agreement has been worked out among them. Members of an alliance are called ...
from Sweden took down Peru's hopeful
Infamous
Infamous may refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Film and television
* ''Infamous'' (2006 film), an American drama film
* ''Infamous'' (2020 film), an American crime thriller film
* "Infamous", an episode of ''Lego Ninjago: Masters of Spinj ...
to take the bronze.
In Starcraft 2, Koreans dominated as expected as Jun "TY" Tae-yang defeated compatriot Cho "Maru" Seong-ju. In the third place match, America's Alex "Neeb" Sunderhaft took down Tobias "ShoWTimE" Sieber of Germany.
Hearthstone's champion was the Philippines's Euneil "Staz" Javiñas took down Sweden's Jon "Orange" Westberg in a close grand final. The third-place match featured two Germans, and it was Raphael "BunnyHoppor" Peltzer to topple Sebastian "Xixo" Bentert.
2017
Despite being called WESG 2017, the event took place in March 2018, with the location being
Haikou
Haikou (; ), also spelled as Hoikow is the capital and most populous city of the Chinese province of Hainan. Haikou city is situated on the northern coast of Hainan, by the mouth of the Nandu River. The northern part of the city is on the Ha ...
.
In CS:GO, with the major already past, more top teams showed up. However, teams such as
SK Gaming
SK Gaming is a professional esports organization based in Germany that has teams across the world competing in different titles. SK is particularly known for their success in ''Counter-Strike'' (CS) tournaments. SK's Brazilian ''CS'' team won ...
from Brazil, which was the second most decorated team in CS:GO and world number two, and Cloud9 from the United States, which was the
reigning major champions and world number three, were knocked out earlier than expected while teams such as MVP PK from South Korea and Team One from Brazil, two teams that hadn't even qualified for the major, made it much further into the bracket than expected. Sweden's Fnatic came back from a large deficit against the
Space Soldiers from Turkey to take home the WESG 2017 title for Fnatic's second straight premier tournament win.
Team Russia stopped the
Cinderella story
In sports, the terms Cinderella, "Cinderella story", and Cinderella team are used to refer to situations in which competitors achieve far greater success than would reasonably have been best expected. Cinderella stories tend to gain much media and ...
of Team One in the third-place match. Dota 2 saw Team Russia take out Brazil's paiN Gaming. Team Hellas from Greece shut down the hometown Rock.Y from China in the third-place match.
South Korea dominated again in Starcraft 2 as Maru redeemed himself from last year after being the runner-up to winning the title after taking down compatriot Park "Dark" Ryung-woo. Kim "Classic" Doh-woo could not make it three Koreans in a row as he fell to Finland's
Joona "Serral" Sotala in the third-place match.
Hearthstone saw Turkey's Kaan "Fujitora" Çekli defeat Michael "Luker" Luker from Canada to take home the grand prize. The unknown posesi from Japan took third place after defeating Thailand's Kantaphon "ScreaM" Suwanmalee. CS:GO's female grand final saw a close series as Russian Forces scraped past LLG Gaming of China to take home all but 100,000 of the prize pool. In the third place match, Those Damn Canadians defeated the experienced Team Sweden. Hearthstone's female grand final featured the two Chinese qualifiers as GLHuiHui defeated Lioon. Cordelia "Scarakye" Chui from the UK lost HongKong's Ip Yan in the third-place match.
2018
Despite being called WESG 2018, the event took place in March 2019, with the location being
Chongqing
Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...
.
The WESG 2018 tournament started only a week after
IEM Katowice 2019
The Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII – Katowice Major 2019, also known as IEM Katowice Major 2019 or Katowice 2019, was the fourteenth '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'' Major Championship and the world championship for the thirteenth sea ...
, the first
CS:GO major of 2019. This made it impossible for most top teams to participate. The only top teams in the tournament were
G2, who got eliminated early from the major and
fnatic
Fnatic (pronounced "fanatic"; also stylized as fnatic or FNATIC) is a professional esports organization headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Founded 23 July 2004, the team has players from around the world, across a variety of games, such ...
, who failed to qualify to the major. Brazilian
MIBR
Made in Brazil (MIBR) is a professional esports organization with players competing in '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive,'' '' Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Siege'' and ''VALORANT''. It was a member of the G7 Teams. MIBR was founded on March 1, ...
managed to participate as well, despite reaching the semi-finals in the major. This meant that they flew from Poland to China only a few days before the event. The jetlag caused an early but expected exit from the tournament in the quarter-finals, where they lost against Windigo. In the semi-finals, Polish AGO defeated
fnatic
Fnatic (pronounced "fanatic"; also stylized as fnatic or FNATIC) is a professional esports organization headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Founded 23 July 2004, the team has players from around the world, across a variety of games, such ...
and Windigo defeated
G2 to advance to the grand-final. The third place decider between French
G2 and Swedish
fnatic
Fnatic (pronounced "fanatic"; also stylized as fnatic or FNATIC) is a professional esports organization headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Founded 23 July 2004, the team has players from around the world, across a variety of games, such ...
was won by the French team. In the grand-final, Bulgarian Windigo won against AGO to become champion. The prize money of 500,000 was received more than a year after the tournament ended.
2019
The 2019 event was scheduled to take place in the first quarter of 2020, with the location being
Chongqing
Chongqing ( or ; ; Sichuanese dialects, Sichuanese pronunciation: , Standard Mandarin pronunciation: ), Postal Romanization, alternately romanized as Chungking (), is a Direct-administered municipalities of China, municipality in Southwes ...
,
but was postponed to an unknown date due to
COVID-19
Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...
. Some regional qualifiers had already taken place. The one-nationality rule was softened in 2019.
As of February 2021, the tournament is not yet officially cancelled, but no announcement regarding the continuation of the tournament hasn't been made either.
References
External links
*
{{eSports
Recurring sporting events established in 2016
2016 establishments in China
Dota competitions
Sports competitions in Shanghai
Esports competitions in China
Alibaba Group
Counter-Strike competitions
StarCraft II competitions
Events in Shanghai
21st century in Shanghai