If you're willing to put your gaming prowess on the line, an upcoming tournament from the Electronics Sports League (ESL) is offering up to $50,000 in prize money for some of the best PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds players in the world to compete over. Called the PuBG Invitational, the tournament will take place in Katowice Poland at the Intel Extreme Masters World Championships, where 16 teams will vie for their share over that $50k prize money.
As with many international gaming tournaments, the organizers are looking to bring in teams from around the world: three from North America, Europe and Asia, with a further seven teams being brought in after successfully completing regional qualifiers that are set to take place later this month. That's where you and your fellow survivors have a chance of making it to the big leagues. There will be 512 qualifier stots overall, so you'll want to get your name on that list sooner rather than later, as per PCGamesN.
"The IEM World Championship Katowice 2017 was the world's largest esports event in history," said the ESL's pro gaming VP Michał Blicharz. "With PUBG's competitive debut at IEM Oakland, we are thrilled to feature it again at such a renowned IEM event. Previously adding PUBG to the agenda brought a lot of excitement to the arena and we feel that it will be a great addition to the IEM Expo."
Although PuBG is technically now fully released with its 1.0 version having debuted just a few week's ago -- this being the first ESL tournament to run under that version -- the game's creator, Brendan Greene, has said that he doesn't feel it's ready for professional tournaments just yet. There are still plenty of bugs in the game and that begs the question of how the ESL will handle things if one team dominates purely because of a quirk in the game's code?
