ESL to host $100,000 Evolve tournament series

Publisher 2K Studios is funding a month-plus-long tournament series for Evolve, Turtle Rock Studios’s monster-hunting first-person shooter, with $100,000 on the line. 

Evolve isn’t your typical team-based esport, even if Turtle Rock has pushed the game into that territory from even before its release on Feb. 10 this year, shoutcasting matches during promotional events like PAX East.

The game tabs one player in the role of the monster, a giant beast with special powers, and a team of four as hunters tasked with slaying said beast. That one-on-four format doesn’t seem to fit a team-based competition, but esports gets around that with a simple twist. The esports format adopted by ESL features two teams of five, with one person on each team assuming the role of a monster. Then two matches are played out simultaneously, with each squad’s four hunters hunting the beast of the opposing team; whoever slays the beast first wins.

The format features some staples of other major esports, like a pick-and-ban phase, where teams decide what maps to play and what monster and hunter characters they’ll use.

The tournament, hosted on the Xbox One, will feature an online qualifier tournament on each of the next four weekends, starting on April 26. The winner from each online qualifier in North America and in Europe will head to the ESL studio in Burbank, Calif., and Cologne, Germany, respectively for their region’s semifinal, slated for May 24 in Europe and May 31 in America. During the week of June 15, those winners will meet in Los Angeles for the global finale.

Whether you’re a skilled hunter or a monster at heart, head over to the ESL site to get cracking.

Photo via Evolve Game