Riot Games is offering the largest cash purse in eSports history.
League of Legends‘ runaway train of success just keeps on going. It has more active monthly players than industry titan World of Warcraft, more than a million people watching its championship tournaments, and now it has the biggest prize in the history of eSports.
The $3 million prize pool will be split between the various Regional Finals held all around the world in places like Shanghai, Seoul, Cologne and Seattle – at PAX West, actually – and the World Championships grand finale this October in Los Angeles. There’s no word on just how much money the eventual grand champions will be taking home, but Riot says that it will be the “lion’s share” of the purse.
Perhaps (partly) to encourage casual League players to check out the high-ranked competitive circuit, yesterday Riot rolled out the full release of its long-in-coming Spectator Mode.
Players who log into the game can opt to watch a current “featured” match between pro-level teams, or they can spy on what their buddies are doing and watch a friend’s game in real time. Sort of real time, anyway – there’s a three-minute delay to ensure that there won’t be anyone using this to cheat.
It’s a cool new feature, even if it does mean that your more experienced LoL friends can taunt you about just how badly you played that one match with that terrible team-fight initiation under their defensive turret that cost your team the game. I already told you, dude, I was lagging when that happened!
