There won’t be thousands of fans cheering on their favorite teams and players this weekend, but the Call of Duty League still plans to put on a show. Like pretty much all live events, the folks behind Call of Duty esports are having to adapt to a new world.
On Friday, the Dallas Empire Home Series weekend goes live on YouTube with the usual 8 of the 12 Call of Duty League teams facing off against one another. The Dallas Empire will be joined by the Chicago Huntsman, Florida Mutineers, Los Angeles Guerrillas, Minnesota Rokkr, Paris Legion, Seattle Surge, and Toronto Ultra.
Players, team staff, and production personnel will all be under separate roofs as they strive to bring the same LAN production to an online-only event.
According to yesterday’s announcement, “in this new, fully online format, players, team staff, and production personnel will compete and work safely from locations of their choice, and in accordance with current health and safety recommendations and governmental mandates.”
The shift to an online-only event also means the League is putting together new rules to address server latency and potential player disconnections. Details on these new rules weren’t given in the Q&A published alongside the announcement, but Call of Duty League is prepared for any hiccups that might occur with online matches.
While the matches won’t be on LAN, watching this weekend’s matches shouldn’t be all that different. Each match will have the usual casting talent calling games. Player cams are also in the cards with officials hopeful they’ll be ready for this weekend’s matches.
As for when Call of Duty League matches will be played on LAN with thousands of fans watching on? Call of Duty League Senior Director of Product Kasey Kramer says, “we will continue to monitor the situation, but we’re thrilled to bring Call of Duty League regular season competition back for fans around the world.”
With social distancing measures unlikely to be lifted for at least a couple more months, we’ll probably see the remaining Home Series schedule play out online.
The first match between the Seattle Surge and Paris Legion kicks off at 4:00 pm EST on Friday, April 10. Catch all the action at Call of Duty League’s YouTube channel.