A major curiosity of mine is following the esports mobile scene, as it seems like in the last few years esports in a general sense has become the biggest thing ever while mobile esports in Western markets really isn’t taking off in any kind of meaningful way. That doesn’t mean people aren’t trying, as both Tencent and Supercell are dedicating serious resources to making mobile esports a thing. Late last month we attended the Arena of Valor World Cup, and our followup article digs into a lot of the challenges these companies are facing. This is all an iterative process, which has be fairly excited to see what happens in the second season of Arena of Valor competition, which kicks off next week in hall 9 at Gamescom on August 23rd. (Of course the whole thing will be streamed everywhere as well.)

Technically, these Gamescom games are the preseason, with the official season starting on September 8th. Prior to that, if you think you’re good enough in Arena of Valor to actually hang with the pros you’ll be able to prove yourself in an open online qualifier which begins on August 25th on ESL Play. Make it through that, and you’ll be competing for $200,000 in prize month across eight weeks of competition, ultimately culminating in the Arena of Valor “International Championship" taking place on November 9th and 10th in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Either way, as a scrub-tier Arena of Valor player, all I care about is watching pros play and the good news there is we’ve got a lot more of that to look forward to.