The Global StarCraft II Team League (GSTL) was a

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 series hosted by

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and

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. It ran from 2011 to 2013 as a team event parallel to the individual

Global StarCraft II League Global StarCraft II League (GSL) is a '' StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void'' tournament hosted by afreecaTV and Blizzard Entertainment in South Korea. This event is broadcast up to 2 nights a week. GOMeXp (formerly GOMTV) had hosted it until the ...

, broadcast on Thursday and Friday, to not conflict with the GSL's Monday to Wednesday broadcast. Following competition with the

KeSPA The Korea e-Sports Association (KeSPA) is a South Korean body established to manage esports in South Korea. It is a member of the Korean Olympic Committee and the International e-Sports Federation. , it was the managing body for 25 e-sports in ...

-run StarCraft II Proleague, which had fully transitioned to Starcraft II in 2013, the GSTL folded, having played its last grand finals event in November 2013.

Teams

This is a list of teams that participated in the final season of the GSTL. Other teams that participated in prior seasons of the tournament include Incredible Miracle (including with

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 ...

as IM-SK),

Team Liquid Team Liquid is a multi-regional professional esports organization based in the Netherlands that was founded in 2000. With the release of '' StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty'', Team Liquid signed their first professional players. In 2012, Team Liq ...

, MVP, Prime, New Star HoSeo,

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 ...

, SlayerS, Old Generations, FXOpen e-Sports, ZeNEX, F.United, and Team SCV Life. Some foreign teams partnered with local ones to participate in the league, including

Evil Geniuses Evil Geniuses (EG) is an American esports organization based in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1999, the organization has fielded players in various fighting games, ''Call of Duty'', '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'', ''Dota 2'', ''Fortni ...

with SlayerS under the name SlayerS-EG, Team Liquid (prior to participating on their own) with Old Generations under oGsTL, and Quantic Gaming with StarTale under StarTaleQ. Axiom-Acer was itself a partnership between Axiom eSports and Team Acer, two non-Korean teams. Of these, Incredible Miracle, StarTale, MVP, Prime, and EG-Liquid, a combination of Evil Geniuses and Team Liquid, moved to the competing StarCraft II Proleague, some before and some after the dissolution of the GSTL.

History

The Global StarCraft II Team League started in February 2011. For its first iterations, the GSTL was a short, 4 day event that invited the top 8 Korean teams to play and took place within a single month. Following three such events in 2011, This format was eventually abandoned due to the popularity of the events, with the tournament series transitioning to multiple month seasons. The new GSTL format allowed a greater number of teams to participate. The inclusion of new teams led to the debut of non-Korean teams participating in the GSTL, both independently and in partnership with local Korean teams. Following this change, the league hovered between 8 and 12 teams, peaking with the latter twice, once each in 2011 and 2012. For its final season, the 2013 HOT6 GSTL Season 2, the league contracted significantly as three teams left the league, with five participating teams remaining. The format changed once again, including a greatly reworked final playoff tournament.

Champions

Main Events

* The finals of the 2013 GSTL Season 2 featured a different format, where two best-of-seven matches were played with AZUBU winning the first 4 - 1 and Axiom-Acer winning the second 4–3, leading to an ace match won by Axiom-Acer's INnoVation against AZUBU's Supernova. As a result, the map score of the finals was 6–7 in favor of AZUBU, but the championship title went to Axiom-Acer who won the ace match.

World Championship Team Event

From March 28 to March 29, 2011, GomTV hosted a special tournament called the 2011 LG Cinema 3D GOMTV World Championship Seoul. The GOMTV World Championship hosted Team Korea vs. World All Stars in a single elimination best of 15 format. The tournament lasted all the way till game 15 but the World All Stars could not complete the come back and beat Team Korea.

Preseason Event

On February 12, it was announced that GomTV would be hosting a GSTL Preseason event for the first StarCraft II expansion,

Heart of the Swarm The heart is a muscular organ in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon dioxide to t ...

.HotS GSTL Pre-Season Announced
/ref> This was the first GomTV tournament played on this new version of the game, and was played on the beta servers. It was the only preseason GSTL event organized, as the league folded following its second 2013 regular season.

References

External links

* (archived from 2010 to 2012–01) {{eSports Sports competitions in South Korea StarCraft competitions 2011 establishments in South Korea 2013 disestablishments in South Korea Recurring sporting events established in 2011 Recurring sporting events established in 2013