Things seem to have finally calmed down with the Evolution Championship Series (shortened to EVO). Last summer cast a particularly dark image on everything regarding fighting games, and various cases of sexual harassment came out. It resulted in the mass cancelation of EVO 2020 online. After everything that happened at the start of that fateful July, EVO was canceled. The entire company went radio-silent, mostly, and no one really heard from them after the cancelation.
Then, today, PlayStation came to Twitter to announce that EVO 2021 would indeed be a thing this summer and that EVO has joined up with PlayStation and Sony. They also announced a preliminary games list for the event and the dates that EVO would be taking place. Let’s break it all down, and look at the information given to us.
Allying with Sony
EVO 2021 was announced today. You can view Sony’s tweet below and read their attached post regarding the partnership.
Welcoming @Evo into the PlayStation family: https://t.co/I3J5iOKhha
Sony Interactive Entertainment and new esports venture RTS have jointly acquired the Evolution Championship Series pic.twitter.com/efOkbf61lU
— PlayStation (@PlayStation) March 18, 2021
What this means is that the previously in-shambles tournament series is bound to have a second chance, after everything that happened. Along with this tweet, another was disclosed, showing the event’s dates and featured games.
An excerpt from PlayStation’s blog post reads as follows:
“Our collective team is laser-focused on one mission: preserving the authenticity of Evo for the fighting game community and finding creative ways, alongside our fans, to grow the tournament and make its events and broadcasts more fun, engaging and accessible than ever. At its core, Evo will remain what it has always been: an open-format competition that gives fighting game fans from different countries a chance to connect, test their skills, and forge new friendships.”
Going to EVO’s website and scrolling down will show this, but here’s a screenshot below of the information.
Scrolling down further, they mentioned the format for the event. For starters, it’s free to enter, and four regions will be involved. Those regions are North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. Each region is planned to have regional qualifiers, as well as prize pools and live streams for all Top 4 and Top 8 segments of each tournament. We’ll continue to update you on when registration for the qualifiers will open. All portions of EVO 2021 will be double elimination brackets.
EVO 2021 will be occurring on August 6th-8th and August 13th-15th. Registration is currently not open right now.
What did you think about the EVO 2021 announcement? Will you be trying to compete? Are you looking forward to the events? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.