Esports may be a global industry, but so far the globe’s biggest nation has largely ignored one of the most competitive titles, Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.
This year that may be changing as today EDward Gaming, the organization that hosts one of China’s top League of Legends squads, just signed a Counter-Strike team, HLTV.org reports, noting that other big Chinese organizations like LGD Gaming, Vici Gaming, and EHOME are likely not far behind.
The new EDward Gaming lineup is headlined by Wang “wjw” JianWei and Han “HaoKing” ZiHao, who both competed in the StarSeries league in China on different teams at the end of the year. Joining them are MinHui “sPiNacH” Sun, Yi “Pohant” Ding, and Kun “ABR” Qian, a trio of players with little track record competitively.
It’s not exactly a lineup that will set the world on fire, or perhaps even dominate the domestic scene, but Counter-Strike in China has to start somewhere. An organization like EDward Gaming investing shows that China may be ready to take the shooter more seriously this year.
The team plans to debut in the Asian qualifier for DreamHack Masters Malmö where they’ll face stiff competition from local teams like CyberZen, featuring Chinese Counter-Strike 1.6 star Bin “Savage” Liu, and Mongolian side the Mongolz, who won the IEM Taipei event last month.
Image via Valve
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