‘SMITE’ World Championship Ends With One Team $1.3 Million Richer
The SMITE World Championship wrapped up play Sunday, with one team taking home an oversized check with $1,306,130 written on it. This was the first world championship for the third-person MOBA, and it featured the third-highest prize pool at $2.5 million thanks to a crowd-funding effort.
The Sunday finale to the SMITE World Championship started with a best-of-three match between the young North American COG Red team and Europe’s SK Gaming. Anchored by 15-year-old Nick “Divios” Neumeyer, the squad of teenagers out picked the older SK Gaming team during the picks and ban phase before the match even started. This led to a convincing win by COG Red in the first match, followed by an utterly dominating performance in the second match against what appeared to be a demoralized group of Europeans.
Don’t feel too bad for SK Gaming though. They still left the tournament with $261,226 as the fourth place finishers. Meanwhile, COG Red took home $391,839 with the third place finish.
The final match between COG Prime and Titan was another North America versus Europe showdown in the SMITE World Championship. This was a best of five match, with COG Prime staking an early 2-0 lead. It looked like a repeat of the consolation match and an early end to the tournament, especially when COG dominated the second match 17 kills to one.
Titan fought back to take the next two matches, however, to tie the grand finale with the fifth and final match to decide who would take home $1.3 million. COG Prime’s decision to ban Ares from being used in the final match appears to have been a critical factor.
Titan’s KanyeLife found a groove and racked up an amazing 34 assists using the God of War in his team’s two winning matches. He scored only a pedestrian four assists using Athena in the final match as COG Prime ran away to win the SMITE World Championship and the $1.3 million payday. Titan collected $522,452 for its second place finish.
.@COGnitive_Media Prime are your SMITE World Champions!!! Taking home a $1.3Million prize pool #SWC #curse pic.twitter.com/HswWiAGnHZ
— Smite: The Game (@SmiteGame) January 11, 2015
You can watch all of the action from the final day of the SMITE World Championship in the official Twitch stream or just view the final match below from the official SMITE Pro YouTube channel.
Developer Hi-Rez Studios is now gearing up for its second official season of competitive eSport play with SMITE. Major changes are coming to the three-lane Conquest map with enhanced visuals and changes come to the spawn camps. You can check out all this in the Developer Q&A video below.
Xbox One players should also expect the SMITE beta to launch for the console soon. Hi-Rez Studios had the game on display during the World Championships and confirmed that existing PC players will be able to perform a one-time clone of their accounts to bring over all their gods and progress.
Did you catch any of the SMITE World Championship? What did you think of the performance of the event and the competitors? Sound off in the comments below.
[Images via SMITE]
