SINGAPORE - A weekend of major e-sports action saw the crowning of five new champions as the inaugural Global Esports Games (GEG) and the Mobile Legends: Bang Bang (MLBB) M3 World Championship came to a close on Sunday (Dec 19).
Four of the five titles went overseas, with the hosts bagging a gold and a silver in the Dota 2 women's and Open categories respectively at the two-day GEG held at the Resorts World Convention Centre.
Singapore Dota 2 women's captain Tay "Merody" Hui Chun and her teammates had lost the first game to Britain in the best-of-three final. But after claiming the second game and a titanic, 85-minute third game, they eventually pipped the visitors to the title.
Tay, 24, said: "Our morale took a hit after the first game, so it still feels unreal that we won. But everyone refused to give up, so we held steady and pushed for the win."
Brazil's Joao Victor "CSC_JVictor" Lopes claimed the eFootball 2022 title, while Chinese Taipei's Hsiang "GamerBee" Yu-Lin won the Street Fighter V: Champions Edition, beating the Dominican Republic's Saul Leonardo "MenaRD" Mena II in the grand final.
Hsiang, 42, said: "It's been a long time since I entered an offline tournament and faced the best players, so it means a lot to get the championship."
In the Dota 2 Open grand final, Brazil beat Singapore 2-0 to clinch the title.
Joao "4nalog" Gabriel Giannini said: "Everyone is super happy - we went through this LAN experience at the other part of the world and we've never been so far, so it was a new experience."
Over at the Suntec City Singapore Convention and Exhibition Centre, Blacklist International lifted the M3 trophy after beating fellow Filipinos ONIC PH 4-0 in the best-of-seven grand final of the US$800,000 (S$1.1 million) event.
Blacklist are the second Philippine team to win the world championship after Bren Esports won the last edition -M2 - which was held in Singapore in January.
The grand final was a rematch of the MLBB Professional League (MPL) Philippines Season 8 grand final in October, which Blacklist won 4-1. They took home the winner's prize purse of US$300,000.
Blacklist got off to a rocky start in the play-offs when they were knocked down to the lower bracket after a 3-2 defeat by US dark horses BloodThirstyKings.
But they made their way through the lower bracket steadily, taking down fellow favourites ONIC Esports from Indonesia en route to the grand final.
Johnmar "OhMyV33nus" Villaluna said: "(What helped us was having) a positive mental attitude, especially after going to the lower bracket, which was emotionally draining."
This wraps what has been an eventful year for Singapore in e-sports, with the Republic hosting six international tournaments since January. Apart from this weekend's competitions and the M2, Singapore also staged the US$500,000 ONE Esports Singapore Major 2021, US$2 million Free Fire World Series and US$500,000 Wild Rift Horizon Cup.
