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4 Posts
The Esports World Cup revealed key details about its 2025 StarCraft II tournament through its Twitter/X account.
The event will be held from July 22-25, with 18 players competing for a $700,000 prize pool.
Spots at the event will be awarded through dedicated EWC qualifier, as well as to top finishers in third party events. In listing those third party events, EWC confirmed that DreamHack Dallas and at least one season of GSL will be played in 2025.
Qualifying spots breakdown:
- (4) DreamHack Dallas
- (2) GSL
- (1) Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora
- (4) EWC Global Qualifier
- (2) EWC Korea Qualifier
- (2) EWC Europe Qualifier
- (1) EWC Americas Qualifier
- (1) EWC Asia Qualifier
- (1) Defending EWC champion
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Oh, so GSL isn't dead yet?
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good to have a GSL sendoff with those who remain!
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GSL is just a glorified "KR regional" for ESL DH Master, dont have the same privilige nor prize money it used to have. Btw, are they still collecting Patreon money all these time?
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Uhm...IEM Dallas (not DH Dallas, isn't the DH-brand dead for like five years or something like that?) is next month. How exactly is that supposed to go smoothly?
GSL will also be...interesting. Can't imagine it will even be remotely a full-offline season.
18 players also seems icky, considering they might go with the same format as last year, which I would say was the biggest point of criticism about the event itself?
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Is it actually stated anywhere that the qualifier tournaments listed (DH, GSL, and so on) are meant to be future tournaments taking place prior to EWC, which is, like, in the next few months? I honestly thought they refer to the last 2024 tournaments.
Edit: Okay, I looked it up, they confirmed on X that "More details on DreamHack Dallas coming very soon". Well, that's neat and surprising.
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Lmao I don't think this is going to be as successful as people think it will be, partially due to the political climate in the USA right now. The other part being that teams and players have only 3 months, realistically, only a couple weeks, to sign contracts and get back into form.
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United States33388 Posts
On April 18 2025 02:17 Balnazza wrote:
Uhm...IEM Dallas (not DH Dallas, isn't the DH-brand dead for like five years or something like that?) is next month. How exactly is that supposed to go smoothly?
GSL will also be...interesting. Can't imagine it will even be remotely a full-offline season.
18 players also seems icky, considering they might go with the same format as last year, which I would say was the biggest point of criticism about the event itself?
It's not IEM Dallas. That's a CS event by EFG that happens to be held at DH Dallas, but that doesn't make every esportS event there an IEM. Since you're being weirdly pedantic, the official branding on the Dreamhack website is "Road to EWC." Or just stop being pedantic and call it Dreamhack [location] like people have since the WCS days.
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On April 18 2025 03:43 Waxangel wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2025 02:17 Balnazza wrote:
Uhm...IEM Dallas (not DH Dallas, isn't the DH-brand dead for like five years or something like that?) is next month. How exactly is that supposed to go smoothly?
GSL will also be...interesting. Can't imagine it will even be remotely a full-offline season.
18 players also seems icky, considering they might go with the same format as last year, which I would say was the biggest point of criticism about the event itself? It's not IEM Dallas. That's a CS event by EFG that happens to be held at DH Dallas, but that doesn't make every esportS event there an IEM. Since you're being weirdly pedantic, the official branding on the Dreamhack website is "Road to EWC." Or just stop being pedantic and call it Dreamhack [location] like people have since the WCS days.
Just for clarification: I wasn't pedantic at you guys, it just seemed like another "oh really EWC?"-moment. And to be fair: None of the events listed on Liquipedia are classified as a "Dreamhack" they are all called something different. Didn't know the overall event was still called Dreamhack, since I can't really remember the name coming up in any of the recent ESL Masters in SC2 either.
Anyway, the bigger concern for me is just the timeframe, though I am positively surprised that we will get a "mini-circuit", I would have never suspected that.
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I am grateful for all these events but I would like confirmation of future events as well otherwise I will always worry it's the last year of SC2.
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On April 18 2025 01:44 tigera6 wrote:
GSL is just a glorified "KR regional" for ESL DH Master, dont have the same privilige nor prize money it used to have. Btw, are they still collecting Patreon money all these time?
They have been collecting money since the last season yes, even now the patreon is still at $4200 per month. In January it was still over 6,000. Plus they even had money leftover before the end of the last season. If you estimate the total amount they received and subtract the prize pool of both GSL seasons last year it seems like this new season should have a very large prize pool. 6 figures easily. Though some of that would be lost to patreon fees and if they take any for production costs instead of prize pool.
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I was confused for a second because I thought this was from ESWC, which apparently has been dead since 2017.
Regardless, glad Starcraft got some good news for a change.
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HOLY SHIT!!! This is so sick!! I forgot that no ESL circuit doesn't mean no more dreamhacks. Having one in the US will give me a chance to see some SC2 action live finally.
AND ALSO I WILL DEFINITELY GO TO THE GSL!!! Please take all our money!!!
Grats to Bellum Gens Elite Stara Zagora as well!!
Only thing is, it feels too soon for an EWC. Kinda hard to believe so many months passed during this 'off-season' already, and the EWC will be happening a couple months sooner than last year as well...
I guess a reduced price pool to $700k is totally fair - not even as a SC2 downsizing thing, but just because this year isn't nearly as developed as usual in terms of events and time spent training and competing for the EWC.
$700k is still amazing, so I'm glad!
I wonder/hope that if EWC is in July this year, it's because they plan to keep it around July from here on, and the next year (if there is one) will give more of a proper full year.
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I am surprised about the price pool, it looks amazing. I expected a much larger downsizing.
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Northern Ireland25332 Posts
Why couldn’t this have been organised and settled months ago?
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On April 18 2025 13:50 lestye wrote:
I was confused for a second because I thought this was from ESWC, which apparently has been dead since 2017.
Regardless, glad Starcraft got some good news for a change.
This "is" ESWC. The Saudis bought the naming rights from the Webedia Group and just changed the acronym. Last year they still borrowed ESWC-History for their website and presented the thing as a continuation, though I think they stopped doing that?
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On April 18 2025 23:24 Balnazza wrote:Show nested quote +On April 18 2025 13:50 lestye wrote:
I was confused for a second because I thought this was from ESWC, which apparently has been dead since 2017.
Regardless, glad Starcraft got some good news for a change. This "is" ESWC. The Saudis bought the naming rights from the Webedia Group and just changed the acronym. Last year they still borrowed ESWC-History for their website and presented the thing as a continuation, though I think they stopped doing that?
Oh! Wikipedia corroborates this. I went on https://www.eswc.com/eswc-second-decade/ and just saw it ended in 2018.
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Nice EWC keeping SC2 hype alive
Gonna be lots of sc2 content to watch for the next couple months
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United States33388 Posts
The order of these events is gonna be pretty important.
The most fun situation would be if DreamHack was the final, last-chance event, but I don't think it will work out that way. I feel like the travel situation with the USA, the # of players already qualified, and the format are gonna have a big impact on who decides to show up.
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The order that makes the most sense would be Online Qualifier (Regional then Global) happen last, probably mid to end June.
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Russian Federation393 Posts
We had nothing for 8 months, now we have everything packed within 3 months..
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On April 19 2025 13:42 RandomPlayer wrote:
We had nothing for 8 months, now we have everything packed within 3 months..
Agreed, we need an EWC 2026 announcement for SC2 and a 3 year deal like other games.
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bruh... this is gnarley... i hope a terran wins...
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I just noticed we already know most of the format for EWC and holy crap...they did a proper one!
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So, now that EWC Sc2 for 2025 is over, we are still in the uncertain territory for 2026, right? Is there anything else coming besides RSL for the foreseeable future?
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United States33388 Posts
On July 26 2025 06:10 kajtarp wrote:
So, now that EWC Sc2 for 2025 is over, we are still in the uncertain territory for 2026, right? Is there anything else coming besides RSL for the foreseeable future?
There will probably be a bunch of $10k tier events announced soon, just like we had in the off-season.
The FEL LAN in Poland is happening literally this weekend—$8k tourney with Clem, Reynor, and some other luminaries coming.
ComebackTV (the French guys) have actually crowdfunded a 10k tier tournament already that has a live component in Paris. Kinda surprised why they haven't promoted it harder: https://fr.ulule.com/maestros-of-the-game/
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So…we are going to have another long off-season under the uncertainty of whether there will be another year of games?
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EPT
