British Esports Association supports grassroots Dota 2 league

The British Esports Association has supported a grassroots UK Dota 2 league.

The league was a collaboration between the British Gaming League and FaceIT – the team who run the FaceIT Pro League in particular.

FaceIT implemented the hub system back in September to help grow individual communities in Dota, Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike: Global Offensive. The FaceIT hubs function similar to regular matchmaking queues within these Valve games, however it only allows the members of that hub to queue into other members of the hub.

Rafee Jenkins from the British Gaming League said: “When Milos Nedeljkovic (FaceIT Mikey) approached me to ask that he wanted me to run the official UK Dota 2 hub, I knew it would be awesome!

“After creating and setting up the hub, we started letting everyone in. Within the first week of creation, we had around 500 players in the hub, with around 10 games being played at a time. These figures slowly grew until we hit 1,000 members, which was a huge milestone for us all. During the month of September, FaceIT were beavering away, making sure that everything was set up properly. I decided that it was time to start the first official season.

“The season would work like this: players would play games within the hub, they would gain points for a win, lose points for a loss and the league would last the length of October. The top five players at the end of the month would take a share of the prize pool. This was when I reached out to the British Esports Association who donated a whopping £400 toward the prize pool. This was a great opportunity for players to show off their dedication to the game, with some players having 100+ games over the month.

“Congratulations to the top five players and to everyone who took part. It was a fantastic month!”

The final standings at the end of October were:

• 1st. Chuen
• 2nd. Slate
• 3rd. Ikki
• 4th. Mr. Li
• 5th. Slieen

Due to how popular the hub is, FaceIT will be partnering with the British Gaming League to provide FaceIT points for the next season, as well as using the BGL hub for official qualifications into the FaceIT Pro League.

Rafee and TokenGoat will be working with Mikey from FaceIT to introduce a new approach to the hub for next season, so stay tuned for more updates.