Overwatch World Cup
The Overwatch World Cup (OWWC) is an annual international Overwatch esports tournament organized by Blizzard Entertainment, the game's developer, with the first edition taking place in 2016. The tournament ran every year until 2019; after a three-year hiatus, the OWWC will return in 2023. The tournament format has varied in each year, with the most recent one involving a preliminary stage in which national teams competed against others in a single-elimination tournament system to claim the five qualification spots in the group stages, which also included five national teams who prequalified via ranking. Top-ranked teams from the group stage advanced to a single-elimination playoff bracket at Blizzard's BlizzCon event every November. The first three World Cups were won by South Korea, while the most recent one was won by the United States. History According to former lead game director Jeff Kaplan, Overwatch was not developed with any dedication towards esports. Dan Szymborski of ESPN stated that Overwatch was poised as the next big esport for having a sufficiently different look and playstyle from established esports game like Counter-Strike: Global Offensive and Call of Duty, enough variety in maps and characters, and strong support from Blizzard to maintain the game for