This article is brought to you by AORUS.
AORUS OPEN PUBG (PlayerUnknown’s Battleground) tournament has distinguished itself as one of the most interesting and inventive esports tournament in the scene. Right now it’s barreling towards its offline second round after a rousing online qualifier that saw 1,211 players do battle for a spot in the top six.
Those six amateur teams, TazerFace, The Happy Campers, HavoK Esports, Team KO, Alpha Black, and Aggro, will face off live on stage in a bracket at PAX West on Sept. 1 and 2, the winner of which will get their ticket stamped to the AORUS Open finals at Paris Games Week later this year. The games will be played at the AORUS booth (number 1939, hall 4B).
Battlegrounds has struggled in the past to appropriately adopt the Battle Royale mechanics into a suitable esport. But Aorus changes that with a special CQB, (Close Quarters Battle) ruleset. This changes Battlegrounds’ DNA in some smart ways: The first safezone is smaller and visible to everyone from the start of the match, there are more guns, ammunition, and painkillers on the map, the Blue Circle is faster and never stops moving, and players can revive downed teammates instantly.
All of this adds up to an infrastructure that makes PUBG a faster, more cutthroat game, rather than the laying-down-in-the-bathtub meta that sometimes bogs down the competition.
The casting staff will feature luminaries like Gareth Bateson, EdEMonster, and EliteShot. It will begin at 1pm Pacific Standard Time, broadcast live from Aorus’ Facebook page. The winning team will have the chance to compete for a $45,000 prize pool, so the stakes are only getting higher as the tournament continues.
