Quake 4 is a 2005 military science fiction first-person shooter video game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision. It is the fourth title in the Quake series, after the multiplayer Quake III Arena, and a sequel to Quake II. Raven Software collaborated with id Software, who supervised the development of the game as well as provided the id Tech 4 engine upon which it was built. The game has an increased emphasis on single-player gameplay compared to previous installments; its multiplayer mode does not support playable bots.
Robert Kelly Slater is an American professional surfer, best known for being crowned World Surf League champion a record 11 times. Slater is widely regarded as the greatest professional surfer of all time.
Painkiller is a first-person shooter video game developed by Polish game studio People Can Fly and published by DreamCatcher Interactive in April 2004 for Microsoft Windows and ported to Xbox in 2006. The game's single player campaign follows a dead man in Purgatory who is offered a deal to defeat the invading forces of Lucifer's army in exchange for being allowed to enter Heaven. The game was particularly well-received for its multiplayer experience and was featured for two seasons on the Cyberathlete Professional League's World Tour.
QuakeCon is a yearly convention held by ZeniMax Media to celebrate and promote the major franchises of id Software and other studios owned by ZeniMax. It includes a large, paid, bring-your-own-computer (BYOC) LAN party event with a competitive tournament held every year in Dallas, Texas, USA. The event, which is named after id Software's game Quake, sees thousands of gamers from all over the world attend every year to celebrate the company's gaming dynasty.
The Cyberathlete Professional League (CPL) was a professional sports tournament organization specializing in computer and console video game competitions. It was founded by Angel Munoz on June 27, 1997, in Dallas, Texas. The CPL is considered the pioneer in professional video game tournaments, which have been held worldwide. The CPL's tournaments are open to all registrants, but due to the ESRB content rating of some video games, CPL competitions are restricted to participants age 17 or older. The CPL has distributed more than US$3 million in cash prizes.
DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. was a Canadian video game publisher founded in 1996 by Richard Wah Kan. It was best known for its adventure games. In 2006, the company became a subsidiary of JoWooD Entertainment. In 2011, the company went into administration along with its parent JoWooD and all assets were purchased by Nordic Games Holding. The DreamCatcher Interactive brand is currently being used as a publishing label for THQ Nordic.
Godiva Chocolatier is a Belgian-based international chocolate maker which is owned by Turkish conglomerate Yıldız Holding
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 the ESL One Cologne 2016 Major. SK currently has players and teams competing in League of Legends and Hearthstone. SK Gaming was founded in 1997 by a small group of Quake players in Oberhausen.
Johnathan Wendel, more commonly known by his online alias Fatal1ty, is an entrepreneur and former professional esports player of the first-person shooter titles Quake and Painkiller. He was an early pioneer of competitive gaming and was once considered one of the best professional gamers in the world. He founded Fatal1ty Inc., which licenses the Fatal1ty brand to gaming accessory manufacturers.
Sander Kaasjager, who plays under the pseudonym Vo0, is a Dutch professional player of the first-person shooter games Painkiller, Quake II, Quake III , Quake 4, Quake Live and Quake Champions, and also World of Warcraft. He has won more titles and prize money—over US$250,000—at professional Painkiller tournaments than any other player.
Kyle Miller, better known as Ksharp, is a retired esports player who played Counter-Strike 1.6, Counter-Strike Source, and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. At the peak of Miller's, career he played for Team 3D.
World Series of Video Games (WSVG) was an international professional electronic sports competition. It held its first season in 2006, with competitions in six different games and six events held around the world including the finals of the event. The total prize purse of the season was US$750,000 which includes the $240,000 prize purse that was winnable at the finals. The WSVG was operated by Games Media Properties, an American gaming company founded in 2002 with the BYOC Lan section subcontracted out to Lanwar Inc.
The 2006 CPL World Season was a series of electronic sports competitions organized by the Cyberathlete Professional League in the fall of 2006. It was a follow up of the 2005 CPL World Tour and was announced by the CPL on July 1, 2006.
The expansion to the computer game Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos, known as The Frozen Throne, had an active professional competition scene, particularly in China, Germany, and South Korea. The game was featured at eSports festivals including the World Cyber Games, the Electronic Sports World Cup, the World e-Sports Games, the World Series of Video Games and the International E-Sports Festival. Outside of the professional circuit, the game had many active competitive circuits, with users at Battle.net ranging between 70,000 and 100,000 at any given moment. In China, in which Warcraft III was extremely popular due to it being easily available through piracy, fans and users often used an alternative client due to the country's poor internet connections to the outside world. Around 3,000,000 copies of the game were sold in the country. 500,000 Chinese competed in the Chinese qualifiers for the 2006 World Cyber Games. The amount of prize money through the years has been significant with top players winning hundreds of thousands of dollars. As usual in competitive gaming, income for Warcraft 3 professional players flowed from various sources like team salaries from pro-gaming teams and sponsorships usually computer technology related. A famous example was the Danish gaming organization known as Meet Your Makers which boasted of paying their players US$300,000 on an annual basis. Similar to older games with huge competitive scenes like Starcraft:Brood War and Counter-Strike 1.6, the popularity of Warcraft 3 steadily declined and towards the end of the previous decade almost all tournaments and players were Chinese. After 2010, with Starcraft 2, League of Legends, and Dota 2 being released and becoming popular, Warcraft 3 gave up its position as one of the prime eSports titles.
Ninjas in Pyjamas (NIP) is a professional esports organisation based in Sweden that is best known for its Counter-Strike teams. In 2012, the team reformed with a Counter Strike: Global Offensive lineup upon the release of the game. Aside from Counter-Strike, the organisation has teams in Valorant, Rainbow Six Siege, FIFA, and League of Legends. They formerly had teams in Fortnite Battle Royale, Overwatch, PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds and Paladins.
Serious Gaming is a professional gaming team based in Amsterdam, Netherlands. It was founded in 2004 by entrepreneur Bas Peeperkorn. Serious Gaming is known for their achievements in first-person shooter Deathmatch tournaments, most notably those by Quake series players Maciej "av3k" Krzykowski and Alexey "cypher" Yanushevsky.
Patrik Lindberg, known by the pseudonym f0rest, is a Swedish esports player who is considered to be one of the best Counter-Strike players in the world. Having played competitively since 2005, Lindberg has been widely regarded within the esports scene as the greatest player in Counter-Strike history. Lindberg is best known for his four years of tenure on the Fnatic roster, which he helped bring to prominence as the dominant team of 2009, during which year the team broke the record for the highest-earning team in Counter-Strike history. Near the end of 2010, Lindberg left Fnatic and joined SK Gaming, which he remained with until July 2012. Soon after, he transitioned over to Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and joined the team Ninjas in Pyjamas. In 2020, Lindberg left NiP to join Dignitas.
New York City [4] 
Sander "Vo0" Kaasjager 
Alessandro "Stermy" Avallone
Benjamin "zyz" Bohrmann
Istanbul [6] 
Johan "sakh" Hessedal
Barcelona [7] 
Rio de Janeiro [8] 
Sheffield [11] 
Singapore [12] 
Andrew "gellehsak" Ryder
Santiago [14]