Call of Duty Championship 2014 offers $1 million in prizes

Activision held its first ever Call of Duty Championship last year in a bid to promote the game in the eSports scene, now the company has announced that a 2014 Championship will take place over three days starting from 28^th March.

The competition will be held in Los Angeles, where the best 32 teams from around the world will compete in Call of Duty: Ghosts- the latest game in the popular franchise. It will be the first official CoD event to be played on Xbox One and the winning team will claim a share of the $1,000,000 prize pool. With Microsoft part sponsoring the event, the matches will be streamed on Xbox Live and through MLG.tv for gamers all over the globe to experience.

"Last year's championship came down to the final minute of the final match with everyone holding their breath to see who would win. The skill, passion and energy brought by these teams and the crowd looking-on showed just what makes our community the best in the world," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing in a press release. "Call of Duty is more than a video game. It's a pastime shared by millions. It's exciting to play and fun to watch, and we can't wait to see what this year's event has in store."

The qualifying rounds will be handled through online tournaments played on the Xbox 360, whilst regional finals being played on Xbox One with live broadcasts taking place from late February through early March in Australia, the UK and the US.

Here are the dates for the live regional finals:

Australia/ New Zealand - Sydney 29^th February, 1^st March, 2^nd March
Europe - London, 28^th February, 1^st March, 2^nd March
USA - Florida, 7^th-9^th March

The competition is open to anyone, professional gamer or not, providing that they meet the requirements of the official rules and regulations. To find out more details please visit the MLG website.

Ghosts gets eSports adjustments

In related news Infinity Ward recently consulted with the 'competitive community' and will implement improvements for eSports play in CoD: Ghosts to be rolled out "as soon as possible". The changes make restrictions on the use of various in-game equipment, tweak the game rules and change some other aspects of the game. For a full list of the 'improvements', made to address competitive user feedback, please check out the CoD: Ghosts blog page with the announcement here.

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What has come to this world?

And the prize pool for the CS:GO section of ESWC was only $25,000! :(

GoodZE
What has come to this world?

What do you mean exactly? :/

Kirano
What do you mean exactly? :/

i think its stupid how you can earn $1 million dollars from sitting indoors all-day and practising playing a game when there's people like nurses, doctors etc who get paid pittance for saving peoples lives.

I don't care that they hold tournaments for gamers, personally i think its a great idea but not when they are earning more than people with jobs that make a difference.

Still… rather gamers earnt money than most of the artists in the music industry.

GoodZE
i think its stupid how you can earn $1 million dollars from sitting indoors all-day and practising playing a game when there's people like nurses, doctors etc who get paid pittance for saving peoples lives.

I don't care that they hold tournaments for gamers, personally i think its a great idea but not when they are earning more than people with jobs that make a difference.

Still… rather gamers earnt money than most of the artists in the music industry.

Well, yes, in principal I agree with you - clearly the input to the future wellbeing of humanity is significantly less from a championship level gamer than a tirelessly working nurse/doctor.

Firstly though, it's $1 million POOL (so actual prices per player/team are going to be much less than that.) Also, I wouldn't underestimate the amount of time, energy and dedication that's put into this. People who go professional at a video game put in thousands of hours. They'll play for 8-12 hours a day, every day for years to get really good. They'll watch gameplay video's over and over to review there every mistake. They'll live and breath this stuff. And then, when it comes to the championship it all comes down to a single click - one wrong press of a button or click of a mouse and they lose everything. That sounds like a job to me! I can only admire that level of resolute dedication to a profession and I certainly feel that, should they go on to win, that they would have ‘earnt’ that money! And I doubt that, beyond the tournaments, the game holds much fun for them anymore - I get sick of Counter-Strike after just a few hours! :p

Then of course, there's the fact that - if $1million prize pools didn't exist… doctors and nurses would still be under paid and over worked. It's not like the money would be magically redirected. I would be frustrated with the management of the health service, not the fact that an incredibly *incredibly* small minority of people get to win a tournament prize.

And there is at least some good point for humanity from this - it's fun! It's fun to watch, it engages people, it inspires people. Videogames give us a distraction from a world of ever increasing stress and human fragility. Yes yes, I know, COD is filled with 8-year old swearing and cursing *insert generic COD-based insult* but the point still stands. Videogames bring fun, joy and a sense of togetherness (in teams of friends separated after university, scattered across the world but who still come together once a week to play games with each other). This is something that should be celebrated with big events like this….

There looking at adding Lan mode into the XBOne version? where is the PC love?

Call of Duty Championship 2014 offers $1 million in prizes

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