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The World Cyber Games was launched in 2000, and during its inaugural offering, the event was officially dubbed as “The World Cyber Game Challenge.” The e-Sport event, which started with an opening ceremony in October 7, 2000, was sponsored by Samsung and the Ministry of Information and Communications and Ministry of Culture and Tourism of the Republic of Korea.
The inaugural staging of the WCG was participated in by gamers representing some 17 countries who competed in an array of PC games which included FIFA 2000, Quake III Arena, StarCraft: Brood War and Age of Empires II.
The first Main Event of WCG was held during its second staging. The said main event of WCG, which was held in Seoul, South Korea, had a prize pool amounting to $600,000. Preliminary events were held in various countries from March to September 2001 and the main event was conducted from December 5th to 9th, 2001. The 2001 WCG posted an attendance of some 430 players which formed the teams representing some 24 countries.
During the 2002 World Cyber Games, the organizers moved to a larger venue in Daejon, South Korea to accommodate the growing number of qualifiers from the national preliminaries. From the 450,000 entries from various national qualifying events, some 450 gamers made it to the e-sporting event, which had a $1.3 million prize pool.
The 2003 edition of the WCG returned to Seoul, South Korea and had an even larger prize pool amounting to $2 million. It was also the first time that the WCG featured console-based events with the inclusion of the Xbox game Halo – Combat Evolved.
During the 2004 edition of the WCG, the event organizers changed venue and moved to San Francisco, California, the first time that the event was not held in its home country. The prize pool of the 2004 WCG e-sporting event reached $2.5 million and had a total of 642 players. This change of venue outside of South Korea heralded a new tradition of holding the event in various locations annually, and these include the 2005 WCG in Singapore and the 2006 WCG in Italy. It was also during the 2006 WCG that Microsoft became a major sponsor and it mainly supplied the hardware and software used in all the events during the annual e-Sports tournament. Since the entry of Microsoft, all the games are now exclusively based on the Xbox console and Windows PC.
The 2007 WCG was held in Seattle, while organizers invaded Europe for the first time in 2008 with the WCG being held in Cologne, Germany. This WCG edition was also the first time that mobile games were included in the gaming event. The 2009 edition of the WCG was hosted by Chengdu, China and showcased a special event that featured Dungeon & Fighter. It was also the year that a reality TV show based on the WCG dubbed WCG Ultimate Gamer was launched.
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