It seems the world of esports has a brand new participant. CD Projekt Red, the makers of critically acclaimed action role-playing game series The Witcher, have signed a partnership with ESL for their standalone card game Gwent.
Gwent, a card game originating from The Witcher series, has been launched as a stand alone game through GoG and is currently in closed beta. The tournament, titled Gwent Challenger, will pit four pro players against four of the community’s best players who will work their way up through several qualifiers.
The four pro players come from many different gaming backgrounds. Jeffrey “Trump” Shih is an ex-StarCraft II player who currently plays Hearthstone for Tempo Storm and is one of the top players from NA. Adrian “Lifecoach” Koy is a German Hearthstone player currently playing for G2 Esports, Peter “ppd” Dager is a DOTA 2 player mostly known for his time with Evil Geniuses and Kacem “Noxious” Khilaji currently streams, plays and makes videos for the Hearthstone division of compLexity Gaming.
Players interested must not only register at the tournament’s official website, but will then have to place in the top 256 players of their region. These players from each of the two regions will compete in a series of qualifiers until only 16 are left from each side. This will then be whittled down to two from each region.
The final four participants will play against the pros in the finals to decide who will win the $60,000 first place prize.
The two regions correspond to two different timezones with Redania being GMT and Temeria being PST. The deadline to sign up is March 22nd. After signing up, players have until April 8th to make it to the top 256 in their region to earn a spot in the tournament. The final four will be flown to Katowice to participate in the finals.
The top 8 bracket will be streamed on CD Projekt Red’s official Twitch channel on May 13 live from Katowice.
Esports Insider says: Gwent has a real chance at becoming a popular card game and with backing from big names like ESL and CD Projekt Red, its future is looking very bright.