Changing the PUBG Esports calendar and enviorenment

It’s nearly Autumn and this means two big things are nearby for PUBG Esports — the Global Championship that closes the 2022 season and the annual discussion, both public and behind the curtain, regarding the future of the competitive battle royale scene. With the latter starting to be discussed behind closed doors, I believe this is the right time to start the conversation about where PUBG Esports should bring on some changes for 2023 to improve the overall health of the esports ecosystem.

Now there are a lot of bigger or smaller topics that can be discussed over longer periods of time and deserve their own discussion about it — team skins, changing the partnership program between Krafton and top organizations, lackluster level of current esports skins, not being able to interest a lot of notable orgs to invest into a PUBG Esports long-term, hosting PGC in Dubai of all places (money talks baby) are just a few coming into mind, but in this write-up we will focus on the annual calendar of PUBG Esports and what can be changed in comparison to previous years.

And I mean we, because this time around I got a friend joining me in writing. If you are hugely invested into the PUBG Esports scene, you may already recognize his name as he’s been covering the global scene for a while, and throughout 2022 has correctly reported the relocating of both the Nations Cup and Global Championship.

Take it away Christian aka. The Wiz

When I look at the PUBG Esports Environment, there is one thing that drives me crazy……the lack of LANs. Outside of the PNCs and PGCs, there has not been a global PUBG LAN since the MET Asia Series and GLL Grand Slam back in 2019. There would have been even more LANs in 2020 if the PGS plan was not stifled by the rapid explosion of COVID on a global level. In an ideal world, which is what this argument exists in, PUBG Esports has more LANs. How would that work you ask? Well, I share the opinion that plenty of other people have about what should be next.

Inevitably, while the PCS system has proven to be a strong stand-in during PUBG’s online era, a return to LAN is necessary. That began somewhat in eastern countries like Korea where PWS was played on LAN for the Korean teams. Inevitably though, PCS can not be the endpoint for every phase of the PUBG Esports Calendar. There must be something more to incentivize orgs and teams to keep going than one global tournament a year. That is when we go back into the alphabet soup of acronyms and pull out the PGS once again.

The basis of the idea was already set before COVID hit with the qualifying process for PGS: Berlin. Yet, keeping that process inevitably ruins the nature of what PUBG Esports has become in the online era. In an ideal world, the PUBG Esports schedule operates in two to three phases a year each consisting of three parts. The cycle would go as follows: third-party tournament, PCS, PGS, ____. The blank at the end of each phase serves as the placeholder for a PNC, a PGC or another marquee event PUBG wants to implement in the scene. Third-party events could range from anything from a more regional event like GLoot, ESL or PWS to a MET, GLL or Predator League where EU and the Americas come together while the other side of the globe does the same.

This concept serves two key purposes: to create a stronger incentive to operate a team in PUBG Esports and to help improve the global state of play. For almost the entire year, APAC remains in its own bubble, with a high emphasis on national leagues, and self-cannibalizes its teams. Then when they come to every global event, the region is ripe with disappointment because their style simply fails to work when put up against other regions. This would not only improve cross-regional play, but would likely improve the overall player quality because the consistent potential of the global stage will force players to adapt and learn how to become better and improve their skills.

I do not claim to have an answer of how to improve the lowest levels of PUBG Esports. I do not claim to have enough experience to say what should or shouldn’t be done to improve that area. What I can say is that the top-tier scene of PUBG esports could become so much better with one major change. It is time for PUBG to leave the online era and become LANimals again.

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Thanks Christian for your insight into this topic.

As for my opinion, there’s a lot I’m going through here so I hope you’ll bear with me here. Just to let you know, as a general rule I wanted this pitch to be what I think would be the best possible yearly event plan for PUBG Esports while making it as realistic and plausible to happen in the real life — ideally, I’d prefer to go crazier with it, but I don’t expect Krafton to risk a few additional millions of dollars on a chance that the entire scene may or may not get bigger across a single year (they did it once in 2019 and it did not go well for them).

And as a straight-away, in my world the entire calendar gets announced in the final quarter of 2022 so teams can go to the orgs and sponsors and have a backbone that they can use in their negotiations for 2023.

HQ LINK

Global Events

The first notable thing on the board is that we’re returning to a 2019–2020 format of three Splits/ Seasons/ Phases per year, each of them featuring regional tournaments that will lead into an offline Global Event. All Global Events, as in previous years, would be mainly organized and funded by Krafton and will receive their unique skin set for the event crowdfunding (expanded from 30% to 40% for PGC and PGI, and to 50% for all other events)

Of those five global events, the one least affected by changes would’ve been the Nations Cup, which as in 2019 and 2022 would happen in mid-Summer with a $500,000 prize pool. The major change here however is that the PNC23 would receive a group stage and be expanded to 24 teams — top 8 from PNC 2022 and 16 nations decided based on the nation’s strength on the global stage across the last 18 months and/or their importance for the global PUBG community.

PUBG Global Series

For the opening and closing phases of 2023, also known as Winter and Summer/Fall seasons respectively, the offline events will be hosted under the Global Series banner that was scrapped in the past due to COVID striking the world before its first-ever tournament. Because of that, I think it’d be only fitting if the city that was supposed to host it in Berlin would host the first PGS event of the year in April ’23, with the fall event heading to Sydney.

The qualification path to both PGS events will force teams to go through the returning Continental Series, which in this world will see a prize pool scaled back to $200,000 per region — the remaining $50,000 would instead be moved from the top placements of PCS to partially fund the PGS’s starting prize pool of $500,000 per event.

Each Global Series event would last a week and would be played across 3 days and 18 matches per stage, with a day off in-between them, and feature 24 teams — 7 top teams from PCS Asia and Europe and top 5 of PCS Americas and APAC/ SEA — with the best two teams in each PCS region advancing directly to PGS Grand Final, and remaining squads having to go through a Play-In stage.

That leaves one phase of the year left, and to keep things from getting stale across the year, the Spring Season would see a different format and a return of a familiar global event…

The Global Invitational

Yes, the PGI would be returning in this world as the 1B event to 1A that is PGC and, to ensure that every subregion would be represented in the tournament, it’ll see the return of the scattered qualifications format that was used ahead of PGI Berlin in 2018.

This would likely mean a weaker total field of 32 teams than for the Global Championship, but hopefully it’ll help to rebuild some of the subregions and give a few of them (LATAM, OCE, MENA, Japan, Taiwan) their own major LAN tournament at least once per year. To help with that, PGI will see a total prize pool of $1,700,000 — with 700k being given out across the regional qualifiers and the remaining million (+crowdfunding) heading to the Main Event teams.

As for the format, I’d like to try something new throughout the PGI - after the first week of the tournament, which would have a single round-robin between four 8-team groups, the field would be split into Upper and Lower brackets, with the second week happening as following:

Week 2 Day 1,3 — Upper Bracket Final — top 8 to Grand Final, bottom 8 to Lower Final

Week 2 Day 2,4 — Lower Bracket Eliminator — top 8 to Lower Final, bottom 8 finish 25–32nd

Week 2 Day 5,6 — Lower Bracket Final — top 8 to Grand Final, bottom 8 finish 17–24th

That’s not the last of surprises though as PGI Grand Finals will be played under a Match Point format you may recognise from Smash Cups or ALGS — that is, to win the PGI Grand Final, a team will be required to score 90 points THEN claim a Chicken Dinner.

Road to 2023 Global Championship

With exception of PNC, all Global Events and their qualifications would have an impact on qualifications for the PUBG Esports season finale — a $2,000,000 Global Championship that would be held across November and early December in Tokyo (for pre-Final stages) and Seoul (Grand Finals).

The biggest reason for that would be the huge revamp of the PGC Point system and a shift from regional rankings to focusing primarily on global rankings, with teams scoring points based on their results in Global Events, Continental Series, PGI Qualifiers and top regional events. As it is currently, the closer we get to PGC, the more points will be up for grabs to ensure consistency across the entire year and to not close the PGC qualification path for any newcomers late in the year.

As for the Global Championship itself, here’s how the 32 slots in the tournament will be split:

- First 16 slots will be allocated based on the brand-new Region Ranking — how it’ll work is that during PCS, PGS and PGI, teams will contribute to the points total the region spot will have based on their final placement on top of their own ranking. For example, based on PGC 2021 final standings:

1st — NewHappy -> points will be allocated to PCL #1

2nd — Heroic -> points will be allocated to Europe #1

3rd — Virtus.pro -> points will be allocated to Europe #2

4th — TSM -> points will be allocated to NA #1

5th — Danawa Esports -> points will be allocated to Korea #1

6th — PeRo -> points will be allocated to PCL #1

7th — GEX -> points will be allocated to Taiwan #1

8th — Team Liquid -> points will be allocated to Europe #3

After the final Global Series event, the top 16 Region Seeds will receive a spot in PGC, which will be given out based on PGC points scored by the region’s respective teams

- Slots #17–24 will be given out to the top 8 teams in Global Ranking, excluding the already qualified teams

- Slots #25–32 will be decided through Last Chance Qualifiers across 8 regions, each holding a best of 15 Finals with a winner advancing to PGC. For each region, 8 LCQ slots will be allocated based on points scored by teams across the year.

In my world, PGC 2023 will be played across three weeks in a format similar to what we know about this year’s Global Championship:

Week 1 (6 days) — Opening Round/ Group Stage -> Single round-robin played between four groups of 8 teams with a shared leaderboard

Week 2 Day 1,3 — Winner’s Round -> Bo12 featuring the top 16 of Opening Round; 1–8th advances to Grand Finals, 9–16th falls down to Grand Survival

Week 2 Day 2,4 — Elimination Round -> Bo12 featuring the bottom 16 of Opening Round; top 8 move on to Grand Survival while the bottom 8 get eliminated

Week 3 Day 1,2 — Grand Survival -> Bo12 featuring the top 8 of Elimination + bottom 8 of Winner’s; top 8 teams advance to Grand Finals

Week 3 Day 3–5 — Grand Finals -> Top 16 teams in the world face off in a Bo18 for the title of Global Champions and at least $500,000.

Europe

• The direct invites system will be scrapped after G-Loot Season 7 in Winter — from that event onward, the invitee system will be merit-based as below:
• G-Loot Season 7 -> Top 8 to PCS EU Playoffs (alongside other Wildcards)
• PCS Spring -> Top 8 to PGI EU Finals (remaining 16 slots decided through Open Qualifiers)
• PGI Europe -> Top 8 to G-Loot Season 8 Ro24
• G-Loot Season 8 -> Top 8 to PCS EU Playoffs (alongside other Wildcards)
• PSL will be supported by Krafton as the de-facto 3rd major EU tournament behind PCS and G-Loot and will be the only Wildcard tournament with PGC qualification points and 2 invite slots to PCS (other regional events like Protality, Telialigaen, Meisterschaft will hand out 1 slot per season)
• PCS EU Playoff will be streamlined to two phases — Group Stage (top 4 per group advance directly to Finals, bottom 4 gets eliminated) and Last Chance (Best of 12, top 8 advances to Finals) and will retain a $25,000 prize pool for teams placed 17–32th.

Americas

• OCE gets added as an official supported sub-region, and will receive 3 slots for ESL Masters Finals (8 NA — 5 LATAM — 3 OCE) plus 2 direct Final slots for PCS Americas (5 NA — 5 LATAM — 3 OCE)
• ESL Masters will remain linked to PCS Americas as in previous years; for OCE, the top 4 in ESL Regional Final will be invited directly to PCS Regional Playoff.
• Additional 3rd-party event will be granted to provide additional PGC points (same way as PSL for EU) for NA and LATAM teams, with a $10,000 prize pool
• LPL returns to serve as a “Wildcard” event for OCE, will be played at the same time period as ESL Masters, and feature a A$10,000 prize pool + 2 slots in PCS Regional Playoff
• To accommodate OCE teams playing in the PCS Regional Playoffs, its prize pool will be expanded from 50 to 70,000$ and will have smaller rewards for teams advancing directly to Finals.

SEA

• The region will be rebranded from APAC back to SEA due to OCE moving to the Americas
• Thailand and Vietnam receive 1 of the ex-OCE slots for regional events (total would be 6 for TH and VN each, 4 for Challenger Rumble)
• SEA Championship returns at the end of the year, as both the final event for the region and a LCQ for Global Championship
• Challenger Rumble will happen 3 times per year, prize pool expands to $20,000 per event

Thailand/ Vietnam

• Both Thailand Series and Vietnam Series receive a prize pool boost to around $40,000 per season (currently it’s around 20k for Thailand, 9k for Vietnam)
• Thailand Open happens twice per year — in Spring as Thailand’s PGI Qualifier and in Fall to decide the final representative for SEA Champs — with around $25,000 prize pool
• Vietnam receives their own Open tournament in Fall, with $25k and to decide the final qualified team for SEA Champs

China

• PCL scales back up to 3 seasons per year, the total prize pool will however remain at 8,000,000CNY (~$1,200,000) to save total costs (sorry)
• PCPI (China Pro Invitational) returns after a 4+ year hiatus, will feature the top 24 teams across the 2023 PCL seasons + 8 qualified teams from PDL, a prize pool of 2,000,000 CNY and serve as China’s LCQ
• Two 3rd-party tournaments will be picked by Krafton to feed into PGC Point Rankings for China and will receive a prize pool boost of 100,000 CNY.

East Asia

• PWS East Asia scales back to 24 teams (11 KR, 7 JP, 5 TW + Smash Cup Winner) and 2-week seasons, which will be hosted offline in Seoul with a $125,000 prize pool and 5 qualification slots for PCS Asia (non-region-locked).

South Korea

• AfreecaTV PUBG League returns as a KR-only league and will be the primary competition for the nation. It will feature 24 teams (12 invited, 6 from LVUP Showdown, and 6 from AfreecaTV amateur/ streamer competitions) playing offline for a prize pool of 100,000,000 KRW + 11 slots in PWS East Asia + 1 direct invite to PCS Asia.
• Smash Cup returns twice per year under Match Point format and will feature 9 teams from Korea, 4 from Japan plus 3 from TWHKMO, winner will take $15,000 and a direct PWS invite.

Japan/ Taiwan

• PUBG Japan Challenge returns and moves back to a PJS league format of 16 teams in Grade 1 + 16 teams in Grade 2 + Challenge Series before each season as an Open Qualifier. Prize rewards in Top Division will be 5,000,000 JPY + 7 slots in PWS + the top team will qualify directly to PCS or PGI. After each season, the bottom 4 of Grade 1 gets relegated and replaced by the top 4 of Grade 2, bottom 8 of Grade 2 fall back to the Challenge Series.
• PUBG Japan Championship will be hosted at the end of the Fall Season with its own 5,000,000 JPY prize pool and as a PGC Japan Qualifier. The event will have the top 8 teams of PJC Fall Grade 1, the top 2 from PJC Fall Grade 2, and 6 open qualifier squads.
• TWHKMO receives its own regional tournament, with open qualifiers each season and a prize pool of $25,000 per season + invites to PWS East Asia + the winner advancing to PCS/ PGI.

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And what do you think should be done and/or changed to improve the PUBG Esports in the foreseeable future? Let us know by tagging us on our Twitter (Christian; Patryk) and getting into the conservation