DESPITE the “bumps” it had to deal with, Galaxy Battles II: Emerging Worlds DotA 2 (Defense of the Ancients) tournament pushed through at the weekend with China team VGJ. Thunder emerging as champion.

In front of a good-sized crowd at the Philippine Arena in Bulacan on Sunday night, VGJ swept its best-of-five grand finals, 3-0, over North American squad Evil Geniuses to take the top prize in the $500,000 event.

VGJ wound up as the best among the nine teams that competed in the big DotA tournament which also included hometown bet TNC Pro Team, Red Bull OG, Team Spirit, PG. Barracx, Team Infamous, paIN Gaming and Skyville.

The win was a culmination of what was a roller-coaster bid for VGJ that saw it relegated to the lower bracket early in the tournament only to pick up its game as it progressed to book a spot in the finals and eventually win.

VGJ, led by Liu “Sylar” Jiajun, showed solid collective form to complement their well-thought-out drafting to stay ahead of its rival for much of the grand finals and left hardly any doubt how deserving it was to be crowned as champion.

“This is the best moment of my entire gaming career,” said VGJ. Thunder’s Liu “Freeze” Chang following their victory that had them bagging the top prize of $200,000.

“If there’s one word to describe the whole team’s feeling about winning first place: it’s happy,” he added.

For finishing runner-up, Evil Geniuses received $85,000.

COULD HAVE BEEN BETTER
While organizers of Galaxy Battles II were happy to see their event push through, they still felt it could have been better if not for some unfortunate and surprising events that took place in the lead-up to it.

Foremost of which was the decision of Valve Corp., the parent company and developer of DotA 2, to rescind the “Major” label on the tournament a couple of weeks before the e-sports tournament over what it considers as “unreasonable infringements on the privacy of the players,” including mandatory drug-testing, which meant no Pro Circuit points were to be handed out that prompted some of the expected top teams to withdraw from the tournament.

It led Fallout Gaming and Purpose Win Entertainment to “scale down” how they would go about the event while working double time to give a good DotA tournament amid all that had happened.

“It was certainly tough, all that had happened. We had been prepping up for this event for a long time and it came to all of us as a surprise. We wanted to bring a good DotA tournament for the fans that’s why we pressed on. We could have called it off but we’re here,” said Ian Tan in an interview with BusinessWorld during the three-day event that saw a steady rise in crowd attendance as the tournament progressed.

Nonetheless, Mr. Tan said they remain undeterred of what had transpired in the lead-up to the staging of Galaxy Battles II and expressed hope of coming back and holding another event in the country to help in the growth of e-sports. — Michael Angelo S. Murillo

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