GWENT: The Witcher Card Game from CD Projekt Red is officially making its way into the eSports arena thanks to a partnership with ESports League (ESL). Based on a card game of the same name playable inside The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, GWENT—despite its newcomer status—is already inspiring unofficial tournaments within its community.
“It’s a real privilege to observe how active GWENT players are in the realm of competitive gaming,” said Paweł Burza, community manager at CD Projekt Red in a statement. “Community-powered tournaments like The Passiflora Championship, The Seven Cats Brawl or The Gwentlemen’s Open are a source of inspiration for the entire team, and we definitely want this part of GWENT to grow.”
Registration for GWENT Challenger, the official GWENT: The Witcher Card Game tournament runs from March 16 to 22, with qualifiers beginning on April 8. The tournament will pit the four best players from the GWENT community against professional gamers, Trump (Jeffrey Shih), Lifecoach (Adrian Koy), Noxious (Kacem Khilaji) and ppd (Peter Dager). GWENT Challenger finalists will compete for a total prize pool of $100,000.
The digital collectible card games (CCG) market will generate $1.4 billion in revenue worldwide in 2017, according to estimates by analytics firm, SuperData. The digital CCG genre is most popular in Asia with an audience of 11.6 million, while North America has the largest physical player base at 9.1 million. SuperData predicts that between the ends of 2017 and 2020, worldwide digital CCG revenue will grow by a CAGR of four percent.
“GWENT: The Witcher Card Game was created because The Witcher community wanted it,” said Marcin Iwiński, co-founder of CD Projekt Red in a statement. “Now we’re seeing more and more gamers wanting to play [the game] competitively, so here we are with a chance to play against some heavy-hitters, and a prize pool to spice things up . . . I can’t wait to see who wins!”
