Indie game development studio Odyssey Interactive has announced the inaugural Omega Strikers North American Collegiate Cup.
The event will see esports and gaming teams from 128 colleges and universities compete for a $25,000 (~£22,200) scholarship prize pool.
The Omega Strikers tournament will take place between November 12th to 13th and will be broadcast live on Odyssey Interactive’s Twitch channel. In addition, the event will be produced by media and entertainment production company Wisdom Gaming, which recently launched its own collegiate-level esports tournament called the Wisdom Collegiate Contender Series.
Besides the collegiate event, the game studio will be hosting a special VTuber tournament on October 15th, boasting a prize pool of $50,000 (~£44,400). Some of the special guests that will appear at the VTuber tournament include popular creators Nyanners, Zentreya and LordAethelstan.
During the first-ever Omega Strikers Creator VS tournament, more than 10m matches were played on behalf of creators, according to the release. Teams led by streamers Moist Cr1tical, Rakin, LilyPichu and more competed for 5% of the game’s Season 1 revenue — which ended up being shared by the top three teams.
Odyssey Interactive was founded in 2020 in Ontario, Canada by four former leads from Riot Games. The four founders, David Capurro, Dax Andrus, Richard Henkel and Eric Lawless all held senior positions either in League of Legends or Teamfight Tactics. In April 2020, the company raised $6m (~£5.3m) in a seed funding round featuring business angels, as well as venture capital firms from the tech industry.
In a previous release, Andrus explained the idea behind the studio and the game’s creation: “Odyssey was founded with the mission to ignite the competitive spirit of the next generation of players – one that we feel will be the biggest, most inclusive and most connected ever.
“Omega Strikers builds upon the lessons our veteran team has learned running some of the most popular multiplayer games in the world. ”
