Gamers Without Borders 2022 kicks off quietly despite huge prize pools

Gamers Without Borders (GWB 2022) is back after a year’s hiatus, this time, rocking a grander prize pool worth $10,000,000 for charity, and another $15,000,000 in main event prize funds reserved for July. With such enticing rewards up for grabs, it’s surely not an event you want to miss this year.

Gamers Without Borders 2022 Tournament Format

The GWB 2022 features regional tournaments all over Europe, CIS, Southeast Asia, China, Saudi Arabia and South Africa set all throughout May. The amount of tournaments and games covered is extensive featuring CS:GO, Dota 2, Rocket League, Fortnite and everything in between.

All events and tournaments are for charity, bar a select few that also serve as qualifiers into a main event called Gamers8 in July.  The core events are Fortnite, Rocket League and Dota 2, and each of them guarantee invitee spots into the main tournament that will feature 15$M in prize funds.

The events now are all for charity with the winners selecting the charity of their choice. Open qualifiers per regions, kicked off on April 28th for both Fortnite and Dota2.

The regional league in Dota 2 will run double-elimination best-of-three matches for the four teams, where only the winner earns themselves an all-paid trip to the GWB 2022 LAN event in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Here, the competition gets tough as GWB 2022 invited professional teams to play for $3,200,000 in prize winnings. For Fortnite, the top 5 duos for EU and NA will be joined by 5 others from MENA/SA to form the 15 duos qualified for the event. They will be joined by influencers and pros at the $2,000,000 main event.

Meanwhile, the qualifiers now also serve as charity events with all the prize money being given away to select organizations.

GWB 2022 Participants

It’s a long shot to suggest any teams on the invite list for now as GWB 2022 hasn’t announce the invited Dota 2 teams. Nevertheless, GWB does have a good track record of convincing notable teams to participate in their grand tournament, happening on July 21-24, and to quote GWB, “some of the best teams in the world (who) were directly invited to play.”

Gaimin Gladiators, Tundra Esports, EHOME and Nigma Galaxy SEA already secured their invites through qualifiers. Other potential invitees from EU may include the top DPC Tour 2 candidates, such as Team OG and Liquid and we might see SEA T1, Fnatic. There is a strong likelihood we would see Nigma Galaxy in the invite list too, despite their mediocre performance in DPC. Hailing from China, PSG.LGD, Xtreme Gaming, Team Aster, and Royal Never Give Up are top candidates to invite. However, considering the ongoing lockdown in China, many Chinese powerhouses might not make it to the GWB LAN event altogether. Since that was the case recently for the Chinese qualified teams, which had to withdraw from the Stockholm Major 2022.

For Fortnite and RocketLeague, we may need to wait a month to know the layout of the participants. Qualified Fortnite duos thus far can be seen at the following link.

GWB 2022 is worth the hype and excitement

Albeit not a Epic Games or Valve supported event, the GWB series still delivers in terms of its scale and the inclusiveness for Esports in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. Fortnite and Dota 2 esports aren’t always popular outside staple regions, such as the EU, China, Americas, and SEA. Yet, MENA’s Esports fanbase has garnered quite a following in recent years, so GWB 2022 is certainly a step in the right direction.

Nothing tops GWB’s massive $15,000,000 prize pool for the main event in July. Well, excluding The International or the Fortnite World Cup, humongous prize pools are just the incentive we need to see esports flourish in the region. GWB 2022 and followup Gamers8 event will hopefully feature matches between world-class teams. We say hopefully cause the outrage mob has a tendency to pile on Saudi backed events each and every time. Let’s hope this year they focus on other things.