ESL to feature PUBG at IEM Katowice

ESL has announced that PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds will be part of the schedule at Intel Extreme Masters Katowice at the end of February.

IEM Katowice is the pinnacle of the Intel-backed competitive tournament and will see 16 teams from regions around the world fighting for a share of $50,000.

Nine teams will be directly invited from North America (3), Europe (3), and Asia (3), with seven more teams from North America (3), Europe (3), and South America (1) fighting their way in through a regional qualifier system. That will begin with a 512-team open qualifier running January 20-21 on ESL Play.

This will be PUBG's third competitive outing following its debut at gamescom last August and its showing at IEM Oakland in November, and its first since the game hit 1.0 and added Miramar to the rotation.

Developer Brendan "PlayerUnknown" Greene recently said he didn't think PUBG was esports-ready, but "will be one day". ESL's tournaments still make interesting viewing though, and it will be fun to see how IEM Katowice plays out.

Tom Bramwell

Editor-at-Large

Tom is probably best known for the 15 years - FIFTEEN YEARS! - he spent at Eurogamer, one of Europe's biggest independent gaming sites. Now he roams the earth, but will always have a home here at AllGamers. You can try and raise him from his deep, abyssal slumber through tom.bramwell@allgamers.com or he's also on Twitter.