The Brazilian line-up of German-based eSports team SK Gaming claimed the crown and a $200,000 prize at the Intel Extreme Masters championship final on Sunday. The largest eSports tournament ever held in Australasia, the Intel Extreme Masters semi-finals and finals were held at the Qudos Arena in Sydney's Olympic Park over the weekend.
Four teams, SK Gaming, OpTic Gaming, FaZe Clan and Astralis, representing pro-gamers from all around the world, battled it out against each other.
The game of choice is Counterstrike: Global Offensive (CSGO), the latest iteration of a game first released in 2000. The two teams of five play as either the terrorists or counter-terrorists over up to thirty rounds across multiple game maps.
This is the end of a journey that had seen four of the group's eight teams, Australia's Renegades and Chiefs eSport Club, China's Vici Gaming and Denmark's North, knocked out of the CSGO tournament.
The semi-finals were held on Saturday. SK Gaming were pitted against Canadian OpTic Gaming, with SK coming out on top, two games to zero. Next up was European FaZe Clan against reigning champions, the Danish Australis. Faze Clan ended Australis' hopes of holding on to the championship title with a two-one win. Rounds were played across bomb defusal maps: de_cbble, the iconic de_nuke and the classic de_train.
On Sunday afternoon, the fans packing the Qudo Arena were treated to an epic final between SK and Faze. Fought across five maps: de_train, de_cache, de_inferno, de_overpass and de_mirage, it was SK Gaming that came out on top, beating FaZe Clan three to one.
Over 7,000 fans descended on inaugural Sydney event to watch the games and checkout the technology on show in the halls, including the Intel Experience Zone. Showcasing the power of Intel's 7th generation i7 CPUs, fans could get hand-on with the latest gaming laptops and desktop PCs and try a variety of VR games.
