Call of Duty Mobile Esports Returns in 2021 – But will anyone notice?

Call of Duty
April 6, 2021
Jordan Ashley

Call of Duty Mobile has been a widely successful spin-off to the popular shooter franchise, and it has a bit of an esports scene going already. In 2020, esports events received some pretty major cancellations. Now, CoD Mobile 2021 esports tournaments are getting their first details, with a teaser for the upcoming Call of Duty Mobile World championship.

This tournament has a lot to live up to. Attention on the game has definitely dipped, and it is difficult to see the event capturing the same audience as last time around. This is everything that’s going on with the return of the game, and the reaction to it thus far.

Call of Duty Mobile Esports

#WeAreCODM

CoD Mobile Esports

Call of Duty Mobile Esports is coming back, and Activision has begun teasing this year’s events. The mobile game has been around since 2019, and had major plans in 2020. It was supposed to be hosting a $1,000,000 prize pool tournament, put on by Sony. Like a lot of games last year though, it didn’t go ahead. The early stages of the tournament proceeded like normal. Qualifiers and regional playoffs were played online. However, the actual finals of the event were cancelled as in-game tournaments couldn’t be completed.

Since the CoD Mobile tournament was cancelled, Activision has been pretty much silent about what’s going on. Barley a word has been said, leaving players completely isolated from the game and without any news on what their future holds. The top ranking players just had the prize pool divided between them, and the event wasn’t mentioned again. While the opening rounds were fun, this kind of deflated the sense of competition.

CoD Mobile 2021 Esports

CoD Mobile 2021 esports teaser is not something we were expected. There was one just been released, giving a first look at the CoD mobile event this year. Details are scarce right now.

We can expect it’ll take a familiar form to last year’s big event. How exactly is it going to go ahead where last year’s failed though?

We can presume Activision is planning on holding the event entirely online this time. That’s assuming they don’t have some miraculous plan to get all competitors in one space despite a plague and bans on international travel. Presumably, they’re switching entirely online. This will likely mean a similar early stage as last year, with qualifiers and regionals being played online. As for the finals, this could change a bit.

We might see the finals being held separately for each region or in a bubble format similar to Worlds 2020 and PUBG PGI.S.  This would probably allow players to be quite a bit closer, with fewer travel restrictions going on at the moment. We could also see a full world finals again. However, this would definitely be complicated by the online connection and the problems that this brings.

CoD Mobile 2021 Esports events might be a bit late

The CoD Mobile Esports World Championship is going to be a good way to kick things back off for the teams involved. However, it probably won’t live up to last year. CoD Mobile doesn’t hold enough regular events to keep the attention of competitive players full time. The last major one was cancelled, followed by complete radio silence. Players and teams of the game had no word on if there would be any more CoD mobile esports at all, and plenty of players moved on. This is probably taking the wind out of their sails for this event, and plenty of competitors will be amateurs at best.

It is difficult to find much excitement for this event, especially when compared with last year. Players and fans have hardly been vocal. Browsing the main points online for these communities, you’re more likely to run into old tweets from 2020 than someone excited for the CODM 2021 event.

Completely abandoning a competitive scene for a year doesn’t look good. It is possible we don’t see the same rosters returning this year, especially as the choices for competitive mobile games have become a lot wider. While cancellations were unavoidable last year, a little more communication probably would have gone a long way. This event might recreate what was missing last year, but a good portion of people involved may have lost interest.

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