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, played individually or as teams.
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, as well as the MMORPG World of Warcraft. He has won the most titles and prize money from professional Painkiller tournaments out of all other players, having won over US$250,000.
Jang Jae-ho is a South Korean professional gamer of the popular Blizzard real-time strategy games Warcraft III and StarCraft II. He is seen by many as the best Night Elf player in the world. Jang Jae-ho is a five time world champion and has won three televised national Korean WarCraft III Championships as well as four seasons of MBCGame's World War. He is particularly known for his excellent micromanagement and innovative strategies. He is often seen using strategies that later set the benchmark for many Night Elf players and was nicknamed the "5th Race" by Gametv.com. He has played and won more televised WarCraft III games than any other Warcraft III players. Jang Jae-ho is featured in the documentary film Beyond the Game. Moon transitioned to StarCraft II and was without a team for a while, before retiring from professional gaming in order to fulfill South Korean military service requirements. After completing his military service, Moon returned to Warcraft 3 and is currently active.
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.
Maciej Krzykowski, who goes by the pseudonym Av3k, is a professional Quake and ShootMania player. He has Polish nationality and resides in Ostróda. He actively competes in international Quake competitions and was signed to Razer and Dutch electronic sports team Serious Gaming and French organization Millenium, but is now signed to British organisation Endpoint. On July 8, 2007, at age 16, he became the youngest Quake champion ever after winning the Electronic Sports World Cup 2007 in Paris without losing a single map.
Jang Min-chul, better known as MC, is a former Korean professional StarCraft II player, playing as the Protoss faction. MC has accumulated more than $500,000 in tournament winnings, and won the Global StarCraft II League (GSL) championship twice. In 2014, Red Bull Esports called him "one of the most successful StarCraft 2 players ever".
The ESL Gaming GmbH, doing business as ESL, is a German esports organizer and production company that produces video game competitions worldwide. ESL was the world's largest esports company in 2015, and the oldest that is still operational. Based in Cologne, Germany, ESL has eleven offices and multiple international TV studios globally. ESL is the largest esports company to broadcast on Twitch.
Lu Weiliang, who also goes by the pseudonym Fly100%, is a Chinese professional esports player of the real-time strategy game Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. He previously been a member of Team Hacker, EHOME and Mousesports. He is considered one of the best Orc players. He had one of the longest playing careers of professional players of Warcraft III.
The League of Legends EMEA Championship (LEC) is the professional League of Legends esports league run by Riot Games in the EMEA region, in which ten teams compete. Each annual season of play is divided into three splits, winter, spring and summer, all consisting of three weeks of round-robin tournament play, which then conclude with play-off tournaments between the top six teams. At the end of the season, the top performing teams qualify for the annual League of Legends World Championship. The LEC represents the highest level of League of Legends play in the EMEA.
Intel Extreme Masters Season X – San Jose was a video game esports tournament occurring on November 21–22, 2015 in San Jose, California, US. It was the first tournament of 10th season of the Intel Extreme Masters and featured League of Legends and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive tournaments. There was a combined US$175,000 prize pool across both games. In the case of the latter it was the first Counter-Strike event an IEM since IEM Season VI in 2012. Mark Cuban and Brian Krzanich played a charity celebrity exhibition match of League of Legends benefiting The Cybersmile Foundation.
Kevin Yarnell, better known by his in-game name Hauntzer, is a professional League of Legends player who is currently a free agent, and was most recently a part of TSM Academy as their toplaner. He has also played for Team SoloMid, Golden Guardians, and Gravity Gaming in the League of Legends Championship Series.
Jason Tran, better known as WildTurtle, is a Canadian professional League of Legends player who is the bot laner for Shopify Rebellion of the LCS. He previously played for Team SoloMid, Cloud9, CLG, Immortals, and FlyQuest. WildTurtle played in the 2013, 2014, 2015, and 2020 World Championships.
Huang Yi-tang, better known as Maple, is a Taiwanese professional League of Legends player for PSG Talon, of the Pacific Championship Series (PCS).
Hung Hao-hsuan, better known as Karsa, is a Taiwanese professional League of Legends player for CTBC Flying Oyster. He is known for his strategic jungle play and found success domestically and internationally during his time as a member of the Flash Wolves, winning several LMS titles and topping many international events. Hung has long been considered by many analysts and other professional players as one of the most mechanically skillful players from Taiwan.
The Intel Extreme Masters Season 12 – World Championship or IEM Katowice 2018 was the world championship for the twelfth season of the Intel Extreme Masters. It was held at the Spodek in Katowice, Silesian Voivodeship, Poland from February 27–March 4, 2018. The event featured tournaments for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and StarCraft II.
Professional StarCraft II competition features professional gamers competing in Blizzard Entertainment's real-time strategy game StarCraft II. Professional play began following the game's initial release in 2010, as the game was the sequel to StarCraft, considered one of the first esports and the foundation of South Korea's interest and success in competitive gaming. Between 2016 and 2019, competition was centered around the Global StarCraft II League in Korea and the World Championship Series Circuit everywhere else, with all Blizzard-sanctioned events being under the StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) banner. Since 2020, Blizzard changed the format of WCS by entering into a three-year partnership with esports organizers ESL and DreamHack.
The 2017 StarCraft II World Championship Series (WCS) is the 2017 edition of the StarCraft II World Championship Series, the highest level of esports competition for StarCraft II. The tournament series' Global Finals were won by South Korean professional player Lee "Rogue" Byung Ryul.
Professional Counter-Strike competition involves professional gamers competing in the first-person shooter game series Counter-Strike. The original game, released in 1999, is a mod developed by Minh "Gooseman" Le and Jess Cliffe of the 1998 video game Half-Life, published by Valve. Currently, the games that have been played competitively include Counter-Strike, Counter-Strike: Condition Zero (CS:CZ), Counter-Strike: Source (CS:S), Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS:GO), and Counter-Strike 2 (CS2). Major esports championships began in 2001 with the Cyberathlete Professional League Winter Championship, won by Ninjas in Pyjamas.
Zdravets Iliev Galabov, better known as Hylissang, is a Bulgarian professional League of Legends player for Team Vitality. He previously played for Fnatic, MAD Lions and Unicorns of Love. Hylissang plays the support role.
