PUBG Corporation Announces 2021 Offline Global Invitational.s (PGI.S)

Next spring, PUBG will host an eight-week long PlayerUknowns Battlegrounds esports festival in South Korea. This is an offline tournament called the PUBG Global Invitational.s (PGI.S) and it will feature a prize pool of $3.5 million. 32 teams from North America, Korea, Latin America, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, and Chinese Taipei will slug it out from February 2nd – March 28th, 2021.

Following the global covid-19 pandemic, measures have been put in place to ensure the safety of all players and staff against contracting the virus. All player and staff schedule will include a compulsory two-week quarantine period.

Teams will battle it out to get their share of the $3.5 million prize pool. Pick’Em challenge, which is very similar to what we see during CS:GO Majors, will also be available at the tournament. Fans can win in-game credits here by voting on the outcomes of the matches. There has been an upgrade in the challenge that now provides teams with a 30 percent share of the revenue as opposed to the 25 percent previously obtainable.

After the weekly survival matches that will see 16 teams advance to the weekly finals stage, 10 matches will be played that will have teams take home a larger share of the prize pool based on how well they perform. Strict guidelines have been set in place to ensure the competition progresses as smoothly and safely as possible.

PUBG Corporation and parent company – Krafton – CEO, CH Kim, commented on the release and expressed his joy. In his statement, he said “It has been humbling to see the overwhelmingly positive fan reaction for our online regional PCS tournaments throughout the year. We are holding PGI.S thanks to fan support and we are confident that we will be able to take the momentum from this year to create our best esports event yet. With full safety measures built-in to the event, we are committed to hosting a safe global esports tournament that can be enjoyed by our players in attendance and fans watching online from around the world.”

At the end of the competition – after all of the matches have been played – the team with the most amount of prize money will automatically be crowned Global Champions.

The Tournament Format

Opening Weekend

In week one, all teams will compete to determine their placement at the start of the competition proper. The top 16 in the first week will go ahead and kick-off the First Weekly Survival.

Weekly Survival

During weekdays, 16 matches will be held. A the end of these matchups, 16 Chicken Dinner winners will emerge. In every head-to-head fixture, the team that wins the match will end their Weekly Survival run, giving room for the 17th placed team in the opening weekend to come in. This process continues until 16 different teams that have all won their matches have qualified for the Weekly Finals. During this stage, every team that won their match is entitled to a share of the prize money.

Weekly Finals

This stage will feature just ten matches. This is the stage where teams can earn a significantly better chuck of the prize money.

People are still skeptical about how this event will progress as it can be risky considering the magnitude of the event. What seems to be a second wave of the covid-19 pandemic is coming as countries are starting to record increasing covid cases again. Government regulation can change last minute, but the gaming community is hoping things go as planned. This event shows how live events are crucial to PUBG as things have been rough in recent years. That is mainly because PUBG Mobile took over and has been in the spotlight.