The Overwatch Countdown Cup and the 2020 Summer Games

Overwatch
August 6, 2020
Mel Hawthorne

We are a single day away from the Countdown Cup and two days into the Summer Games. Overwatch is booming right now with both competitive and casual finally giving us plenty of action this month.

The Overwatch Countdown Cup and the 2020 Summer Games

© Overwatch

Overwatch Countdown Cup

The Overwatch Countdown Cup is the last of the tournament events in this OWL season. Once again we will witness two separate brackets in both North America and Asia. Both regions combined will split $275,000 in prize money. Each champion gets $50,000, while the rest is divided up until 4th place. There is a bounty of $5,000 for each tournament win as well.

The SF Shock, Mayhem, Eternal and Fusion secured preferential seeding straight into quarterfinals on the NA side, while Shanghai Dragons is guaranteed Semifinals in the Asian Cup. All the other teams will start the gauntlet from scratch.

There is an added importance to performing well at the event however. The top places will guarantee themselves preferential seeding for the OWL Playoffs next month. Additionally, those interested in Overwatch betting will rejoice that this event is listed at most esports bookmakers.

Double your Overwatch League Tokens

All viewers can get double amounts of Overwatch League Tokens for watching this weekend. The tournaments start on Friday at 3:00 p.m. ET. Remember that you get a fixed amount of tokens for each hour spent watching. During the Countdown Cup the amount will be 10 per cycle.

2020 Overwatch Summer Games

Since August 4th up until August 26th, the most popular Overwatch event of the year is back. Its the Overwatch Summer Games! This years summer, sun and fun brings the usual limited-time game-modes with it… along with a number of new features.

Lucioball Remix

This additional mode is set to make Lucioball even more chaotic and fun for everyone involved! Instead of the usual game rules, players will now find themselves on the map with two balls – if one scores, it’ll respawn after a while, while the other one keeps going. Players aren’t reset after a goal – you just straight up keep going!

Busan and Sydney, two of the game maps you can play on are getting some changes for the mode – new pillars and surfaces for wall riding and jump pad surfaces, respectively.

Lucioball classic isn’t leaving though – you can still play the normal mode if you prefer. Changes to it include shorter cooldowns, longer boop and punch ranges, and a small boost in movement speeds. Both modes have a mercy rule – in normal Lucioball, a 5-pont lead ends the game, in Lucioball Remix, a 10-point lead will do the trick.

Challenges

Of course, there are also three weekly challenges for participating players – each with their own epic skin as a reward, along with some other stuff as well. The first week will give players the Union Jack Tracer skin, along with an icon and a spray. Week 2 features Sand Castle Bastion, a corresponding spray and an icon, while week 3 has the Ice Cream Orisa skin, spray, and an icon.

The challenges can be completed in the usual modes – Quick Play, Competitive or in the Arcade.

New rags

Of course, in addition to allowing players access to skins from the Summer Games from previous years, there are also new skins that were released with the new update and Summer Games modes. There are 5 new Legendary-tier skins – Tropical Baptiste, Lifeguard Pharah, Feskarn Brigitte, Karate Doomfist and Surf’s Up Echo.

The skins are all pretty cool, but we particularly like Echo and Doomfist!

If you’re more interested in other things, don’t worry – this year’s Summer Games also brought with them 2 highlight intros, a new emote, 3 new poses, 7 player icons and two sprays… and that’s in addition to the ones you can get from the Challenge rewards!

Read next: Who are the top Overwatch players out there?