Evo fighting game championship will go online-only due to COVID-19

By Aaron Mamiit Published April 25, 2023

This year’s edition of the Evolution Championship Series, Evo 2020 in Nevada has been cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, but the fighting game event will still happen online.

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Evo 2020 was set to run from July 31 to August 2 at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino in Las Vegas. However, the annual tournament is the latest casualty of the measures put in place to prevent the further spread of the coronavirus.

A message from the Evo team… pic.twitter.com/ANXUXDiNGK

— Evo (@Evo) May 1, 2020

In a follow-up tweet, the organizers said that all purchased tickets and hotel room reservations will be automatically refunded. The registration form for the online tournament, meanwhile, will be released next week.

Organizers weren’t able to provide details about the online event in the summer, including specific dates, which games will be involved, and possible rules changes due to participants playing from home with their personal internet connections. Matches for fighting game tournaments such as Evo are usually held in person to reduce lag, and it is unclear if latency issues will be taken into account with the planned shift to online matches.

The cancellation of Evo 2020 follows Epic Games’ announcement that the Fortnite World Cup will skip this year. However, unlike Evo 2020, there will be no online format for the Fortnite tournament due to “limitations of cross-region online competition.”

Various large-scale physical events have been canceled this year due to COVID-19. In the gaming industry, the affected events include E3 2020, which was supposed to take place in Los Angeles from June 9 to June 11. However, according to its organizers, plans are already underway for E3 2021.

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