Organizers, athletes laud Filipino crowd & world-class internet speed at Galaxy Battles Competition

Pre-event debacles, such as the withdrawal of the game’s major developer and the exit of some invited teams, certainly did not hinder event organizers FallOut Gaming from pulling off a successful run of this year’s Galaxy Battles II: Emerging Worlds Dota 2 Tournament at The Philippine Arena last January 19 to 21, 2018.

Prior to the tournament proper, Valve Corporation, the parent company and Dota 2 developer, withdrew its support from the much-anticipated E-gaming event due to stipulations imposed by the Games and Amusements Board of the Philippines, which required visiting athletes to undergo medical exams, including ECG and drug tests. This resulted in a number of invited teams eventually dropping out of the competition. Valve also rescinded the tournament’s Major designation, which effectively removed the Pro Circuit qualifying points for the tournament.

Despite these setbacks, FallOut Gaming powered through to host eight teams who vied for the championship during the much-anticipated tournament, which was attended by several thousand fans throughout the three-day event and even streamed live on Youtube and Twitter.

Event Host Eri Neeman garnered raves from the crowd for entertaining the fans throughout the tournament – “from building hype for the players to his sincere interaction with every audience member he met,” as shared by Snowtechstuff.com EIC Bryan Snow. Ren Vitug of Mineski.net also observed that the Filipino fans were in full swing as attendance increased by the day; eventually drawing about 20,000 on the tournament’s final day.

Aside from the tournament’s athletes, the event organizers also lauded the Internet connectivity throughout the event, which was provided by local telco PT&T. Adrian Gaffor, FallOut Gaming’s Managing Director, described it as “the smoothest we’ve ever had in an e-sports event” while Kit Yap, FallOut Gaming’s Campaign Executive, commended the stable Internet speed and how it was crucial to the success of the Dota Tournament. The Internet performance was further commended by Philip Aram, the COO and Manager of the fan favorite team, Evil Geniuses, who tweeted:

As the event’s official Broadband sponsor, PT&T provided a full-scale 4 GBPS (Gigabytes per second) network that supported both the actual tournament, as well as the player facilities where the participants continued their training preparations prior to the event. Successfully delivering a truly world-class network experience for a global event and sizeable audience like this could not have come at a more opportune time for PT&T, who incidentally announced their plans to bid for DICT’s (Department of Information and Communications Technology) 3rd Telco player slot a few weeks before the tournament.

On the virtual battlefield, it was China’s VGJ.Thunder who bested the competition and took home $200,000 of the tournament’s prize pool of $500,000, after defeating their North American rivals, Evil Geniuses in a sweeping 3-0 win during a best-of-5 series grand finals match on the event’s penultimate day.

Other teams who also participated included wild card draw PG.Barracx, South American contenders Infamous and Pain Gaming, and Russia’s Team Spirit. The Philippines’ own TNC Pro Team bowed out of the competition after being eliminated by its longtime rival, EU-based OG. The homegrown team finished the tournament with $35,000 in prize money. ADVT