Catch up with SMITE’s $1,000,000 world championship

The world of e-sports and competitive gaming has seen a massive explosion in recent years in terms of both viewership and prize money. Top competitive gaming tournaments now routinely sell out large arenas and venues, often attract higher viewership figures than some real-world sports, and collectively dish out millions of dollars each year. Third-person MOBA SMITE is no exception, packing out Atlanta’s Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre this past week for its second annual World Championship tournament. Eight top teams from around the world battled it out over $1,000,000 in prize money from January 7th to January 10th, with the first place winners taking home $500,000.

Last year’s champion COGnitive Gaming disbanded some time after its big win, but the team’s entire roster was picked up e-sports organisation Cloud9 for this tournament. They joined the other qualifiers Enemy, Paradigm, Epsilon eSports, Fnatic, AVANT-Garde, paiN Gaming, Isurus Gaming, Oh My God B, and Qiae Gu Reapers in a tense four-day competition. Reveal winner

Interestingly, the 2015 SMITE World Championship actually had a larger prize pool of around $2,612,260 million. Hi-Rez Studios has since decided to cap the prizes for the World Championship at $1,000,000 and disperse the remaining funds throughout the competitive season in an effort to make professional gaming more stable as a career for a larger number of people. If you missed the action this week or just fancy seeing what a million dollars worth of SMITE looks like, head over to the official SMITE Twitch page where all four days of the action are available to watch on demand.