Blizzard are crackers, and they want everyone to know it. They’ve gone and scheduled the final leg of StarCraft 2’s Season 2 to coincide with The International 3 finals – Valve’s very own weekend of competitive Dota 2 shenanigans.
There are two possibilities jostling for position here, actually. Either Blizzard are crackers, or they’re in cahoots with Valve to bring down Twitch, the already-overworked host of all things eSports. Maybe they want to explode the mainframe, and get out of this time-consuming pro gaming scene altogether.
That’s the only reasonable way to interpret the broadcast schedule that appeared on the Blizz blog last night. Months of regional matches will culminate in two days of finals in not one, not two, but all three regions beginning August 10.
Dota 2’s International finals, meanwhile, will run from Wednesday, August 7, and both competitions will conclude on Sunday, August 11 – henceforth to be known as the day the stream died.
StarCraft’s WCS is currently entering its round of 16 group stage in America and Europe, while the Korean pro contingent ready themselves for next week’s round of eight bracket stage.
The International features the top sixteen teams in the world, as decided during qualifying rounds in May. Its $2.6m prize pool, ever-growing thanks to contributions from International Compendium sales, is now the largest in the history of eSports.
Needlessly dividing that growing eSports scene over such a critical weekend seems like a terribly silly idea. I suppose the question now is: which will you be watching, come August 10?