Razer announced that Razer Arena is now supported by one of the most popular PC games in the world, League of Legends. The company plans on sponsoring amateur tournaments with prize pools of $50,000 to be paid out in the first quarter of 2016. In a charity League of Legends tournament, Razer will donate more than $10,000 to a good cause in the name of the winning team. (In the interest of full disclosure, Razer invited Tom's Hardware staff to participate in the charity event.)
Razer Arena enables casual, amateur and professional gamers to create, manage and compete in custom-made League of Legends tournaments around the world. The integration of Razer’s eSport organizational tool seems to simplify the often-tedious task of making a tournament happen, and the company appears to be fully behind the Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game title.
“League of Legends is the most popular PC game today, with an unparalleled amount of interest in competitive play,” said Min-Liang Tan, Razer co-founder and CEO, in a press release. “We were one of the first supporters of League of Legends eSports teams, and we’re excited to offer Razer Arena to aspiring amateurs and professionals alike.”
Perhaps it’s Razer’s love for LOL that prompted the company to sponsor amateur tournaments to the sum of $50,000 in Q1 2016, which the company boasts as “the largest amateur league prize pool to-date.” That is certainly a lot of money, especially considering this isn’t for professional tournaments, where the top teams often take home much more. Now it seems that you don’t have to be a sponsored professional gamer to make a few bucks laying waste to the competition in one of your favorite games (if one of your favorite games happens to be League of Legends).
Razer is hiring a third-party production company to broadcast the event via Twitch. The company will also create a PayPal account for fans watching the live stream that want to donate additional funds to charity, on top of the $10,000 Razer is already fronting.
We’ll let you know the full details of the charity League of Legends tournament when plans are finalized, including where to watch the stream and how to donate. For now, all we know is that Twisted Treeline 3v3 matches are the name of the game, and that I'm the bomb with Ziggs. You’ve been warned.
Update: 12/15/15, 10:11am: Added screenshots of the Razer Arena UI.
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Derek Forrest is an Associate Contributing Writer for Tom’s Hardware and Tom’s IT Pro. PC gaming, graphics hardware and VR devices are among his favorite topics to cover. He is a lifelong PC enthusiast, former IT administrator and a custom PC builder with a penchant for creating music, voice acting and all things geek.
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