Overwatch League

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About

Overwatch League is a professional competition for the Blizzard Entertainment first-person shooter video game Overwatch. During an Overwatch League season, 12 teams play scheduled games against one another to earn a position in the season playoffs.

History

In early November 2016, Blizzard Entertainment formally announced Overwatch League during the Blizzcon convention (shown below).

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2018 Season

The inaugural season for the Overwatch League ran from January 10th, 2018 to July 28th, 2018. The season consisted of four five-week stages. Each team played a total of 40 normal matches in the regular season.

YouTube Edits

On January 23rd, YouTuber McCreamy uploaded an edit of Overwatch League footage titled "Overwatch League in a Nutshell" (shown below, left). Within six months, the video accumulated more than 2.8 million views and 3,700 comments. On February 28th, YouTuber AndrewJRT uploaded a similar video titled "Overwatch League on Drugs," gaining over 1.4 million views and 1,400 comments over five months (shown below, right).

Grand Finals

The Grand Finals for the 2018 seasons took place on July 27th and 28th at the Barclays Center in New York City, New York. At the finals, the London Spitfire team defeated the Philadelphia Fusion team, with Spitfire's Jun-Young Park (a.k.a. "Profit") named the Most Valuable Player.

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The event included a performance by DJ Khaled (shown below). In the coming days, several news sites published articles about the online reaction to the performance, including Kotaku^[1] and The Daily Dot.^[2]

Controversies

The Overwatch League has taken several controversial steps against the banning of certain memes and Twitch emotes among competitors, including Pepe the Frog and TriHard.

On April 8th, 2018, YouTuber Glink uploaded a video titled "The Overwatch League's War On Memes," which discussed the controversial bannings and included an included an interview with streamer xQc (shown below).