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South Korea2107 Posts
https://www.intelextrememasters.com/season-15/katowice/2020/12/an-update-on-esl-pro-tour-and-iem-katowice-2021/
"The 2021 edition of Intel Extreme Masters Katowice hosting the Championship events for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive, StarCraft II and Warcraft III: Reforged will not take place in Spodek due to the COVID-19 pandemic. (Information for ticket holders is at the bottom of this post.)
All three tournaments are planned to be played without an audience, but as in person competition hosted on location in Europe. Should COVID-19 remain a major barrier to the safety of our talent, players and staff we will then revert to online play in Europe.
The competitions are intended to be played as otherwise planned (with the exception of a date change in the DreamHack Warcraft III Championship):
IEM Katowice: StarCraft II
ESL Pro Tour Masters Championship
Dates: February 23-28 (unchanged)
$500,000 prize purse
36 player tournament (format unchanged)
Check the StarCraft II Overview for details.
We expect that winning IEM Katowice will be as difficult as it ever has been and that it will be the best competition it can be.
We are still looking at options for our future tournaments in 2021 and when we can bring our events back to arenas, and will look to provide an update on this in January 2021.
We understand that many of you have already purchased tickets and are offering these people two options: you may keep your tickets for IEM Katowice 2022 OR you are entitled to a full refund. Ticket holders can get the full information here.
We thank you for your ongoing support during these adaptive times and will keep you up to date. Be sure to follow us on Twitter and check our website for further updates!"
IEM will be releasing more information about the future of the StarCraft II Pro Tour tomorrow:
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playing on location is the best we can hope for, let's hope all goes well and smoothly!
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Should COVID-19 remain a major barrier to the safety of our talent, players and staff we will then revert to online play in Europe.
I gues online play in Europe means, that they would still fly all players from outside Europe in, just not to the same location?
It s phrased a bit weiredly IMO.
Good to see that offline Event without an audience, simmilar to GSL is the intended solution. I belive it s the best option there is at the moment..
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Finland965 Posts
Pretty much what I expected. I wouldn't really even hold my breath for the offline studio tournament.
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Makes perfect sense to do it this way.
I don't expect live audiences at major esports events until the 2nd half of 2021 at the absolute earliest, and probably not until 2022.
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As expected tbh. It's still going to be great to finally have a proper offline tournament, which should be possible due to vaccines.
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Katowice being played offline would be the best solution but playing on EU servers wouldn't be that bad if every player could be flown to Europe; a 500k cross server World Finals event, instead, wouldn't be acceptable.
I believe they could succeed in setting up an offline event, let's hope they will.
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As good as it was going to get, this is good news!
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3 Lions
United States3705 Posts
this is great news! hopefully there won't be any visa issues
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Great news until we get any travel restrictions.
International sport events held in the USA for example are currently pretty weird and a lot of international athletes drop out.
Hope that goes better with poland, really wanna have some offline StarCraft!
Especially when its about the biggest tournament of the year.
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Really want to know how the next season after Kotowice will look, Less region lock?
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Elentos
55594 Posts
On December 15 2020 00:18 Musicus wrote:
Really want to know how the next season after Kotowice will look, Less region lock?
Speaking of that, I seem to recall Apollo saying they'll announce 2021 plans in November
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On December 15 2020 00:25 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2020 00:18 Musicus wrote:
Really want to know how the next season after Kotowice will look, Less region lock? Speaking of that, I seem to recall Apollo saying they'll announce 2021 plans in November
Apollo lying? no way
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Thank  Flash god it will be offline!
Off topic: is EPT Finals THE tournament of the year for Counter-Strike? Kinda suprised they "only" got twice the amount of prizepool as Starcraft 2 does (especially concidering that they are 5 players per team)
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On December 15 2020 00:25 Elentos wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2020 00:18 Musicus wrote:
Really want to know how the next season after Kotowice will look, Less region lock? Speaking of that, I seem to recall Apollo saying they'll announce 2021 plans in November
He later tweeted that they got delayed by unspecified corona stuff. He then said "in a couple of weeks", which lines up well with Heyoka's "tomorrow".
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On December 15 2020 00:38 SmoKim wrote:Thank Flash god it will be offline! Off topic: is EPT Finals THE tournament of the year for Counter-Strike? Kinda suprised they "only" got twice the amount of prizepool as Starcraft 2 does (especially concidering that they are 5 players per team)
EPT Finals is not THE major tournament of the year for CSGO.
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On December 15 2020 00:45 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2020 00:38 SmoKim wrote:Thank Flash god it will be offline! Off topic: is EPT Finals THE tournament of the year for Counter-Strike? Kinda suprised they "only" got twice the amount of prizepool as Starcraft 2 does (especially concidering that they are 5 players per team) EPT Finals is not THE major tournament of the year for CSGO.
Cool, is it The International/whatever Valve calls their event? or is that only for DOTA 2?
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On December 15 2020 00:54 SmoKim wrote:Show nested quote +On December 15 2020 00:45 Blitzkrieg0 wrote:On December 15 2020 00:38 SmoKim wrote:Thank Flash god it will be offline! Off topic: is EPT Finals THE tournament of the year for Counter-Strike? Kinda suprised they "only" got twice the amount of prizepool as Starcraft 2 does (especially concidering that they are 5 players per team) EPT Finals is not THE major tournament of the year for CSGO. Cool, is it The International/whatever Valve calls their event? or is that only for DOTA 2?
The International is just Dota. Valve does "majors" for CSGO, but they're run by the normal tournament organizers by bid. EPT finals just isn't one of the majors. It will be the largest tournament in early 2021 because valve canceled the Spring 2021 major though.
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OFC! finally we can watch real games
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Awesome, would have been sad to end the season with ping.
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EPT
