Update: This weekend ESL took to Reddit to backtrack on dropping The Unspoken from the VR League.
“While The Unspoken has seen a decline in signups, we were wrong to believe this warranted a lack of interest in the Grand Final,” Partner Manager itszerolove said in a statement. “We’re thrilled to see the passionate community surrounding The Unspoken so eager to prove themselves in front of an audience at Oculus Connect 5—both Oculus and ESL are happy to oblige. After discussing with Oculus, we will keep the original plan: the top four players from The Unspoken will be invited to Oculus Connect 5, provided travel, and will compete for a share of the overall VR League prize pool.”
More information about the finals is set to be released in the coming weeks. Original story is below.
Original Story: Back in May we reported on the launch of the second season of the VR League (VRL), an eSports tournament run by Oculus, Intel and ESL that sees players going head-to-head across a range of games for cash prizes. One of the major games to focus in the event was Insomniac Games’ magical multiplayer game, The Unspoken. A month on, though, and the game has seemingly been dropped from the league, and players aren’t happy.
A VRL player that wishes the remain anonymous reached out to UploadVR to point out that The Unspoken had been dropped from VRL in the past few days, a month after players had already been battling it out. According to an image found on the league’s Discord channel, ESL had previously promised that the two top players in The Unspoken tournament would win a trip to Oculus Connect 5 in September to face off in the finals for a chance to win part of a $220,000 prize pool.
Since we’ve heard about this story, though, that page has allegedly been changed to remove any mention of the finals at Oculus Connect 5. Meanwhile, a presumed ESL staffer on the Discord channel named Gravity confirmed on Wednesday that the decision to drop the game had been made “less than 48 hours ago”. In a later message, Gravity cited a reduced lack of interest in the game as one of the reasons behind the decision: “Yes its correct – part of the decision is the activity which shrinked [sic] in the last weeks.”
From the looks of it, then, VRL players just spent a month fighting for a prize that no one is going to get. UploadVR reached out to ESL for comment yesterday but is yet to hear back. We’ve also reached out to Oculus for comment this morning.
Plans for other games in the tournament, including Echo Arena, don’t appear to have changed at this time.
