WePlay! announce Pushka League
WePlay! continues to bring excitement and joy to Dota2 fans, as the Ukrainian tournament organisers recently unveiled a new full-fledged online league, dubbed WePlay! Pushka League, which will feature 14 Dota2 teams from CIS and Europe.
WePlay! Pushka League will be starting on Thursday, April 23, featuring seven teams each from Europe and CIS regions, vying for the largest slice of US $250,000 prize pool. With the announcement of the new league, WePlay! also unveiled there will be 12 directly-invited teams, while the remaining two spots will be awarded to the champions of open qualifiers.
As of today, the teams who received a direct invite are OG, Team Liquid, Team Nigma, Team Secret, Alliance, Ninjas in Pyjamas, Natus Vincere, Virtus.pro, B8, HellRaisers, Gambit Esports and Team Spirit.
Each region will have its teams compete in a best-of-three (Bo3) round-robin matches, to determine who will advance into the playoffs. Top four teams with the best record by the end of the first stage will advance, while the remaining three teams from each region get eliminated from the tournament. More information about the league, its schedule and other details are set to be unveiled soon.
Team Nigma, the reigning WePlay! Bukovel Minor 2020, WePlay! Tug of War: Mad Moon and WeSave! Charity Play champions released a statement, thanking WePlay for the invite and all the hard work the Ukrainian esports organiser put into delivering top-level of esports entertainment to fans during these difficult times, ushered by the COVID-19 outbreak.
“We are grateful that esports can go on during these times. Having online leagues is the right approach, and we appreciate being able to participate. We want to provide a good show for everyone watching,” said Nigma in the statement.
“Online tournaments are definitely what Dota 2 fans, players, and teams were hoping for during the period of quarantine. In some sense, we’re going back to the roots when the majority of tournaments were played online. Players are hungry for competitive Dota, so I believe 99% of teams would agree that launching online tournaments with such speed is huge for the Dota 2 community,” added Sergey Glamazda, Virtus.pro general manager.
WePlay! Pushka League is the second Dota2 online league to be announced since Dota Pro Circuit was put to a halt due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which forced ESL One Loe Angeles Major to be postponed, while DOTA PIT Minor and EPICENTER 2020 both got cancelled. That effectively means 2019/20 season of DPC will feature only two more Major tournaments before The International 10.
"When you take the best ingredients and combine them in a single product – one always gets the result that will be greatly accepted by the market. Our league combines the best teams, talents, and WePlay! Esports infrastructure, which includes video production, logistics, software tools, media, PR, and other elements. Having found a nice window in the tournament schedule, we happily present our audience with a new league,” said Oleg Kort, WePlay! Esports CEO and Managing Partner.
WePlay! Pushka League attendees:
Europe:
OG
Team Secret
Nigma
Ninjas in Pyjamas
Alliance
Team Liquid
TBD (online qualifiers)
CIS:
Natus Vincere
Virtus.pro
B8
HellRaisers
Gambit Esports
Team SPirit
TBD (online qualifiers)
