Optic and Spacestation Gaming announce Halo tournaments ahead of HCS Major

OpTic Gaming, one of the biggest North American esports groups in the world, are set to host an invitational event at the Esports Stadium in Arlington, Texas in December. They won’t be the only esports team hosting a tournament before the Halo Championship Series Year (HCS) 2 commences next year in February.

Spacestation Gaming will also be having a unique online event of their own a month prior to that. Some of the important details – like the teams that have been invited and prize pools – are yet to be announced, but it has been revealed that the Spacestation Gaming event will have new game modes, and it will be called the HCS Spartan Showdown.

Image Credit | HCS

Spacestation Gaming and OpTic Gaming constantly looking to grow

Spacestation Gaming have been a real force in Halo esports, and have more recently tried to do the same in Rainbow Six Siege. Whatever esport they venture into, it has been clear that they’re highly ambitious and looking to go places.

One thing to note is that around the time of these tournaments, the HCS qualifiers will also be taking place, before the main event takes place from February 24th-26th in North Carolina. As big a force as Spacestation gaming are in Halo esports, they aren’t quite OpTic Gaming. OpTic Gaming are all over the news right now, after having defeated Cloud9 in the finals of the 2022 Halo World Championship.For their efforts, they were awarded $1 million in winnings.

OpTic Gaming have had to fight off the likes of Cloud9 and Sentinels in recent months, but it’s pretty clear that, for now, OpTic Gaming are the kings of competitive Halo. This was their biggest win of the year, but they had also won HCS Orlando Major just a while back.

Most Halo esports teams will welcome the opportunity to participate in this invitational tournament, which has so far given a pretty good indication that OpTic gaming don’t just want to take part in Halo tournaments, but are also actively trying to grow the sport. The same goes for Spacestation Gaming, who are hoping that by adding these new features within Halo’s forge, the full potential of the competition can be unlocked sooner.

Halo esports still in infancy with steady growth recently 

Both organizations will be hoping that their respective invitationals are successes, but it’s unlikely that either will match the viewership that the finals had with 143,585 viewers. The World Championship also had around 1.8m hours of cumulative viewing, which is a mammoth figure for the sport.

Halo esports has still got some way to go but there have been great signs of progress in recent months with new organizers like Quadrant showing that the scene is on the rise. The number of organizers is likely to increase after 343 Industries made an announcement suggesting that an expansion was to take place. It remains to be seen if more organizers will join as partners – for now, it is certain that the likes of Pioneers and Acend won’t be joining in.

There was a lot of concern at the start of the year with some organizers leaving, but the HCS World Championship has helped settle some nerves. One of the reasons this wasn’t a major concern was the fact that the organizations that left were from a lower-tier. The other major issue was with respect to the Halo Infinite game itself, but it doesn’t seem to have affected viewership. On the whole, this might be the best phase to be in Halo esports – things are certainly looking up.