BERLIN, July 27 — Starting August 3, the community surrounding last-person-standing elimination title “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” will be able to contribute to the prize pool for a Gamescom PUBG Invitational set to run over the course of Germany’s giant video game expo, August 23-26.

In 2011, team action game “Dota 2” launched its first ever world championship event in Cologne, Germany, at the city’s annual video game expo, Gamescom.

For the next two years, its prize fund was static at US$1.6 million (RM6.852 million), but by 2013, developer and tournament organizer Valve inaugurated a fan-funding system that saw the “Dota 2” competition pot swell to US$2.8 million.

Fans could buy a pack of tournament-oriented digital perks and goodies and, since then, the prize pool has grown year on year, with “Dota 2” becoming the highest-earning eSport in history.

Last year’s tournament, The International 2016, finished with a US$20.7 million fund. This year’s has reached US$22 million before the August 7-12 event has even begun.

Four months into its lifespan and “PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds” isn’t yet as popular as “Dota 2,” but it’s getting there.

Developed by South Korea’s Bluehole, under the direction of Irish creator Brendan “PlayerUnknown” Greene, the game is sold through Steam, Valve’s own retail, social, and multiplayer networking platform for Mac, Linux, and Windows PC gaming.

According to Valve’s own statistics, as tracked by third party service SteamCharts, “PUBG” already has half as many players as “Dota 2,” and is closing in on Steam’s second most-popular game, “Counter-Strike: Global Offensive” (steamcharts.com/cmp/578080,570,730 as of July 26, 2017.)

It’s a significant metric, given that “PUBG” has been available for a tenth as long as “Dota 2”—the latter launched 48 months ago, in July 2013 -- and “Dota 2” is free, as opposed to the US$29 price tag attached to “PUBG.”

But like “Dota2,” which had two years’ worth of hype and invite-only testing, as well as the reputation of its predecessor to fall back on, “Battlegrounds” has its own grassroots lineage in place.

Brendan Greene rose to prominence with “DayZ: Battle Royale,” an unofficial add-on for 2012’s survival simulation “DayZ”; he continued refining the concept with a mod for 2013’s “Arma III” (“DayZ” was itself spun off from “Arma II”) and then as a consultant on 2015’s “H1Z1.”

The “Battle Royale” concept itself is a direct reference to the controversial, cult hit Takeshi Kitano year-2000 action film of the same name, in which a rowdy class of high schoolers are stranded on an island and instructed to fight until only one remains.

In “Battlegrounds,” over 100 players parachute into an island and have approximately 30 minutes to survive by stealth or shooting; meanwhile, an electrical field constricts around a randomly chosen point, flushing players out from hiding places and ushering survivors towards a final confrontation.

So it is that in order to raise funds for its Gamescom PUBG Invitational, a selection of “Battle Royale” costumes are being used as incentives; it costs US$2.50 to unlock one of these in-game costumes, once it is delivered as a reward for playing the game, with proceeds split between organizational costs, prize funds, and charitable causes. — AFP-Relaxnews