IEM Sydney 2019

Lights, cameras, keyboards!

Sydney’s Olympic Park was home to intel’s extreme eSports extravaganza, the Intel Extreme Masters (IEM) for the first weekend of May 2019, and STG was a guest of Intel to witness the drama, action and nail-biting gameplay from the onset to the clincher finals.

Spread across the stadium floors was hands-on with the latest and greatest gameplay for already released and upcoming PC titles making use of Intels 9th Generation i7 processors, flexing their might, crunching the fierce action as gamers from around the Globe experienced everything from VR (Virtual Reality) through to hardcore FPS (First Person Shooters).

Intel’s NUCs ran the show floor for three straight days without choking on high-end titles. Small form factor, zero excuses.
Beat Saber pulled the biggest crowd on the VR side, backed by a full-motion chair rig at the Predator booth. Bethesda used the weekend to show off Rage 2.
MSI, Legion by Lenovo, ASUS, Acer and HP Omen filled the free-play area with laptops and desktops for anyone who wanted a hit-and-run match against a stranger.
SteelSeries, CoolerMaster and Razer took over three floors with RGB gear and mobile peripherals. The PC mod section was where the real builds were, with rigs worth stopping for.

But it wasn’t just the free-to-play areas that the gamers had come for. IEM is all about eSports and the flavour of the weekend was CS:GO (Counter Strike).
CS:GO stayed the weapon of choice for the international teams, playing best of 5 across 30 rounds a game.

In the arena the crowds were treated to some seat and adrenaline fueled action.
Overwatch got a brief showing, but the grand prize came down to CS:GO. FNATIC and Team Liquid met in the Finals, and every eye in the stadium was on that series.

While it appeared throughout the hours of play FNATIC had it in the bag, Team Liquid rose like a phoenix and scooped the prize. Winners of IEM Sydney 2019.
Team Liquid had been stuck in a losing streak coming into this, so the win wasn’t just a trophy. It’s the kind of result that sets up momentum heading into the Majors later this year.

IEM ESL 2019 was THE eSports competition of this year, so far. With the glitz, glamour and tension of any high profile sports match, the seriously engaged audience had been treated to a showdown.

With eSports on the up Intel have heavily invested not only funds, but high end equipment in to this phenomenal gaming platform. Going from makers of CPU’s through to top shelf small form factors, high rendering GPU’s and more, Intel are proving that they themselves are the masters of eSports.

IEM ESL Gallery