After a long wait of three years, Bigpicture Interactive successfully concluded the World Cyber Games on 30 July 2023. World Cyber Games is one of the oldest esports events, dating back to 2000. World Cyber Games is a multi-event esports competition that runs throughout the year. In 2023, Bigpicture Interactive initiated the rebirth of WCG across several gaming titles alongside a massive gaming festival in Busan, South Korea.
Usually, WCG used to be an esports-centric event, but over the past few years, audiences are loving new content creation aspects and global esports titles, which has led to an entirely new format for this year's WCG.
Read More: S8UL Gaming Festival Creates History With Over 13,000 Attendees And 200 Million Impressions
Recap of the Resurrection of World Cyber Games in Busan
World Cyber Games made its way back to Korea after 12 years. BEXCO Exhibition in Busan hosted the World Cyber Games, including the WCG 2023 Busan Main Event: Global Esports tournament and 'Influencer Contents.' WCG 2023 was a three-day event, running from 28 July to 30 July 2023.
WCG 2023 hosted nine different esports titles where the qualifiers were spread across seven months from December 2022 to July 2023. All the tournaments began with open qualifiers which had no participation prerequisites. The esports tournaments included WCG's collaboration with Riot Games for Valorant and Blizzard for Hearthstone. In 2023, WCG added mobile titles like Clash Royale and Mobile Legends: Bang Bang.
After seven months of gruesome online qualifiers, WCG 2023 Busan Main Event hosted the Grand Finals of all these matches. Mobile Legends: Bang Bang had a prize pool of $40,000, and the players from EVOS Icon were the winners, taking the $20,000 cash prize home with them.
WCG 2023 Busan hosted various creator show matches and 1-1 fan meetups. An Overwatch 2 show match was hosted between Ryu Je-Hong and Hak-Sai. The event also had some FIFA Online 4 and TFT show matches. World Cyber Games 2023 Busan hosted The Sparring Zone, where the fans engaged in 1v1 battles with their fellow attendees in games like Starcraft: Remastered and League of Legends.