Super Evil Megacorp, maker of the leading touchscreen esport Vainglory, and Twitch, the world’s leading social video platform and community for gamers, have inked a three-year partnership in North America and Europe for the official Vainglory Championships and supporting esports structures. The collaboration will include a multi-million dollar investment from each company and a multi-pronged program across sales, promotions, broadcasts and live events.
Vainglory was the fastest growing mobile game on Twitch in 2015, with 150 million minutes viewed. The touchscreen esport was also the largest with a $350,000 prize pool around the world last Fall, and professional teams like TSM, SK Gaming, Team Secret and G2 Esports joining the fray in the last few months. Vainglory’s Winter Championships, which were recently held at Red Bull’s esports Studio in Santa Monica, California and the Gfinity Arena in London, grew its audience more than three times the Autumn Championships, drawing more than 1.5 million views on Twitch.
The Twitch partnership will help better serve the millions of players and fans of Vainglory and its esports teams and the robust Vainglory support exhibits Twitch’s commitment to esports and touchscreen games. Twitch will expand and grow Vainglory’s presence with key promotions of Vainglory streamers and esports broadcasts, dedicate a team to help run Vainglory esports events, build official esports websites as well as handle sponsorship and merchandise sales.
“The esports industry has been dominated by PC and console titles, but Vainglory is ushering in a new mobile games movement,” said Nick Allen, Director of Esports Operations at Twitch. “The incredible engagement Vainglory has garnered on our platform is testament that our community welcomes the convergence of esports and mobile gaming.”
Starting today, teams of three players hopeful to win the Spring Championship can register on Vaingloryleague (LINK TO http://www.vaingloryleague.com/vgl-spring-season-qualifier/ ). The three-month season kicks off with open qualifiers and will have a total prize pool of $80,000 USD.
“We’ve been working closely with Twitch since even before the global launch of Vainglory, and their massive, wildly passionate gaming community has helped our game develop a loyal and growing following,” said Kristian Segerstrale, COO and executive director at Super Evil Megacorp. “By working with Twitch in this new and expanded capacity, we’re going to be able to bring our esports programming to the next level and provide better and more frequent coverage to fans.”
Vainglory’s Spring Season has today kicked off with a new game mode (in beta) “Battle Royale”, a new hero “Alpha”, a new map skin, a massive “Halcyon Days” event and new skins for Fortress. New players will be eased into the game in new, bite-sized tutorial pieces, and the competitive season begins late April. In the beta Battle Royal mode, each player is assigned a random hero, and the game starts with heroes already leveled up; as opposed to starting from level one with a certain hero like in a normal match.
2015 was a momentous year for Vainglory, with more than $350,000 in prize money awarded to players across live events held in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and China. 2016 has already been action-packed, with the North American Winter Season Championships having just taken place at the sold out Red Bull esports Studio in Santa Monica, Calif, and the European Championships at the Gfinity Arena in London. Amazon and NVIDIA are two of the key sponsors that have returned this year.
Recently, renowned professional esports organization Team SoloMid (TSM) acquired the reigning North America champions, following a series of recent eSports team acquisitions in the Vainglory competitive world, including Team Secret, G2 eSports and SK Gaming. The Vainglory eSports scene also includes hundreds of original teams, including home-grown professional teams paying players under contract such as GankStars, Halcyon Hammers and Phoenix eSports.