FACEIT is launching its Quake Pro League

Popular international tournament organiser FACEIT has just announced that they’ll be launching a series of new tournaments for the game Quake Champions. The so-called Quake Pro League is going to be launching this August, and unlike many other games’ leagues, it won’t be limited to just a few months, but will be running all the way through to next August, so a year-long event series!

That’s a pretty huge commitment, and it’ll be kicked off at QuakeCon 2019 in just under a month, on July 25^th. A total of 20 hand-picked competitors will be going up against each other. 10 players from the Americas and another 10 from Europe and CIS countries will be competing on FACEIT’s platform. The action itself will be live-streamed from the company’s studio.

© Bethesda

Now, where a lot of these competitions are based out of the US, FACEIT isn’t – their studio is located in London, United Kingdom! Co-Founder & CBO of FACEIT Michele Attisani commented on the new league: “Competitive Quake birthed one of the very first online esports communities, and we’re thrilled to be a part of this groundbreaking new league and to help shape the future of this iconic esport. We have huge plans for the broadcast from our innovative studio in London and we can’t wait to bring fans around the world a whole year of exhilarating Quake competition.”

Indeed, Quake Champions isn’t exactly a new game – the first installation after a 12 year break in the series was released in August 2017, and has been free to play since August 10^th last year. It seems that August is set to be a pretty big month for the game with this new league launching that month as well!

FACEIT will further be hosting offline events through the year, both major and minor ones. While most of the details are still up in the air, we do know the rough dates – November 2019, February 2020, May 2020 and QuakeCon 2020 in either July or August, as the event usually takes place.

© Bethesda

Now this isn’t the only event that FACEIT has been making headlines with – they will also be hosting the very first licensed esports series for Respawn’s breakout hit Apex Legends. Though that game’s popularity has certainly settled a bit, there has been a huge demand for an official pro league from gamers and fans. Their Apex Legends Pro Series features 16 teams competing in eight tournaments across the summer.

It seems that FACEIT is trying to shine a spotlight on titles that don’t get a lot of attention from tournament organisers – though both Quake Champions and Apex Legends are immensely popular, neither have the sort of online presence and tournament lineup that bigger esports titles like Overwatch, DOTA 2 or even CS:GO have. This is disappointing to fans of the franchises, of course, and it seems that FACEIT has set out to change things! Good job, FACEIT!