The first international 'Overwatch' tournament has its finals contenders
UPDATE: Aug. 5, 2016, 9:05 a.m. EDT The story no longer says the grand finals place the top North American team against the top European team.
Weeks of qualifier matches have whittled down dozens of North American Overwatch teams and dozens more European teams to the top four teams from each continent. These eight teams will be competing to win the first-ever international Overwatch tournament, the ESL Atlantic Showdown.
The teams that made it to the Atlantic Showdown quarterfinals are Europe's Misfits, Reunited, Creation Esports and Rogue. North America's contenders are Team EnVyUs, Cloud9, Fnatic and Team SoloMid. They will play for their piece of the Atlantic Showdown's $100,000 prize pool at Gamescom in Germany, Aug. 20 and 21.
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In Germany, the playoffs will see the eight teams split into two brackets and end with the grand finals Aug. 21. ESL has not announced the format of the matches, but they will likely be single elimination, best-of-five matches.
The tournament started in early July. ESL held four weekly qualifiers for each region. Dozens of teams competed in each qualifier and the top four placing teams each week reached the finals qualifiers. The North American and European brackets each had their own finals qualifiers with 16 teams, which took place between Monday and Thursday.
As the first major Overwatch tournament, many of the qualifier matches had big blowouts as the teams with less experience and less skill got knocked out handedly. The remainder of the competition going down in Germany will give a better idea of who the top Overwatch teams in the world are.
Gamescom 2016 has already sold out of day tickets, although afternoon tickets will still be available at the event. The matches will also stream on Twitch.
