The York Showdown university Dota event to take place in March

The York Showdown university Dota event to take place in March

Dominic Sacco
3 min read | 22 Jan 2018

The University of York’s gaming society FragSoc has teamed up with the British Gaming League (whose Dota event was supported by the British Esports Association) to develop a new tournament: The York Showdown.

It’s a two-part event, with online qualifiers and offline finals based at the University of York’s campus. It’s open for all universities to enter and is aiming to be the largest university Dota 2 LAN in the UK, with at least 16 teams taking part.

Two online qualifiers will take place – on February 17th and 24th. The top two teams from each qualifier will be invited to the University of York for the live finals on Saturday March 17th.

Any university team can sign up, and it costs £10 to enter, with all money going to SpecialEffect – the charity that helps people with disabilities play video games.

For this event, organisers have created a university Dota 2 league in-house. This is hosted on FaceIT and free to use for university students.

Organisers will be broadcasting matches on the FragSoc Twitch stream, and hosted on the British Gaming League’s channel.

Organiser Rafee Jenkins said: “I wanted to put on a high quality, well produced event for universities all over the country. On top of this, we want this to be an opportunity to raise money for a great cause: Special Effect. Having two autistic cousins, I can see how regular use of the Nintendo Switch and other gaming consoles can help them learn essential skills. There’s no reason why other children shouldn’t have that opportunity and Special Effect can help with this.

“Also, I personally love organising events and tournaments. When I met Sir Action Slacks in York last week, he reignited that spark and I got the ball rolling with David as soon as I got out of the studio.

“In terms of our aims, we want to emphasise that York is the leading university for esports. We put on an amazing event in the CSGO FragSoc invitational, so we are going to go above and beyond. We also want to create relationships with brands so we, FragSoc, can use them to produce larger and more exciting tournaments.

“We want to try and grow the Dota 2 scene in the UK, so we are opening a FaceIT hub with the help of the British Gaming League, and finally, we want to prove that York is better than Lancaster at Dota 2!”

Players and sponsored interested in getting involved with the York Showdown can contact Rafee Jenkins or visit the FaceIT page for more info.

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