Garena, the developer of the hit mobile battle royale game Free Fire, announced on Thursday (26 August) that they will no longer be hosting the next iteration of the Free Fire World Series (FFWS) scheduled in November “in light of the evolving situation surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic”.
“The well-being of everyone involved in the FFWS was our top priority as we carefully considered all options. We made the difficult decision not to hold the event to continue safeguarding the health and safety of the Free Fire community,” Garena said in a statement.
“The World Series stands as Free Fire’s largest and most exciting esports offline tournament. The growing safety concerns, however, have made it challenging to provide players and fans both an enjoyable yet safe offline esports experience.”
Garena added that they were still looking forward to hosting Free Fire tournaments with both players and fans in live attendance “safely in time to come”.
The previous iteration of the FFWS was held in Singapore back in late May, with Thai squad Team Phoenix Force claiming the championship and the grand prize of US$500,000. Garena also stated that the tournament notably posted the highest peak viewership of any esports match in history, when excluding Chinese platforms, with 5.4 million concurrent viewers.
The first-ever international championship tournament for Free Fire, the Free Fire World Cup, was hosted in April 2019 in Bangkok, Thailand with Indonesian team EVOS Capital winning the inaugural title.
The first-ever iteration of FFWS was then held later in November of that year in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, with hometown team Corinthians claiming the inaugural FFWS championship.
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