PHILIPPINES Win Big at Acer's Asia Pacific Predator League 2024

From a gamer spectator such as me, I always knew the Philippines would fare well in the recent regional competition, Acer's Predator League 2024. At the Mall of Asia Arena in Pasay City Philippines, fans flocked to this venue to watch DOTA 2 and Valorant country representatives (in Asia Pacific) as they battle it out to see who's best in this region.

There were over 26 world class teams who were raring to do their best in the 2 day event. The prelims was fun albeit being a bit uneasy for some teams because they had only one match to qualify for the next round. It certainly wasn't easy to adjust that fast but those who did took advantage of the format and won their respective rounds. It was also fun to also talk to the eSports athletes before they went into the actual match, here's some of them on video!

The international eSports teams also talked about their experience doing the tournament here in Manila. They did expect matches would be hard since some of them are Tier 1 franchise teams, and a lot of them wanted to experience what it feels like being in a match with them. Although some of them lost their matches, they learned a lot in the process and promise to be back with an even greater team soon.

Aside from that, executives from different regions went on to tell us how it's been actually very beneficial to run these events in their respective countries. To say the least, business has been good and they are planning to do the regional Predator League in Malaysia next year. They also want to do it bigger and better in the coming years as they find big value in knowing how name recall plays in the gaming industry and that's exactly why they're number 1 in the market!

PABLO was super good!

The Asia Pacific Predator League was also the best in entertainment. World class Filipino performers showed up and got us partying at the start, between games and in the finale. On day 1 alone, I got my dose of Valorant fare as Ylona Garcia who sang "Entertain Me" when NEON was launched as a character, oh how I love her! Aside from that, Urbanddub, Al James and Donny Pangilinan joined in the fun plus a full Valorant game with SB19 and other Acer influencers made the evening extra epic! Asia's Popstar Royalty Sarah Geronimo also ended the day with her performance, people were at awe! 

Day 2 had Josh Cullen, bands Sandwich and Spongecola, Pablo (who did a new single on stage) and KZ Tandingan give us the absolute best in Philippine talents, it was like a full blown concert with the games on the finale day.

And in the end, it was a sweet day for the Philippines as Team Secret won the Valorant championship and Blacklist International Rivalry won the DOTA2 championship. Both teams from the Philippines won 65,000 dollars and their own Predator Shield. Initially, BOOM Esports was actually favored to challenge Team Secret, but Japan's FAV Gaming surprised them all. They got 20,000 dollars together with Execration (for DOTA2), and BOOM Esports + Team Flash got 3rd Place with a 7,500 pot each. Team Aster and IHC Esports got the same for DOTA2. Intel MVP awards went to Jeremy “Jremy” Cabrera (for Valorant) and Marc Polo “Raven”Fausto (for DOTA2), getting a prize of 10,000 dollars too.

If you're up to it, some of the performances are already up on my TikTok account so just search @kumagcow there, and some of the country interviews were done live on my FB page (just search kumagcow) as it's all there!

 

Winning Prize and Shield: The Predator League 2024 Philippine Qualifiers

We've been covering the Predator League for years now and for a while, they've been gone because of the pandemic. This year, they're really raring to go and even extending the whole thing into lands unchartered and putting out a whopping Php 1 Million prize plus the coveted Predator Shield in games of Dota 2 and Valorant. Who will win this remains to be seen.

Young and undiscovered talents have been benefiting from this, imagine 15,000 teams battling it out to represent the country in the Asia Pacific Predator League. From the Qualifiers, to the Group stage and the Finals, this is going to be one tough year. In the country alone, they will have one in Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao, plus another one in the NCR. That spot certainly will be something that they'd wish to have especially with the prizes at state for them. These important matches will be livestreamed too so you all will be able to cheer for your favorite teams. Once the champion of DOTA 2 and Valorant gets crowned, they get the prize and the shield, including the runner ups, and will be able to represent the Philippines in the big league. That's an honor any team would love right?

The Grand Finals will be early 2024 so stay tuned for more announcements soon. Follow PredatorGamingPhilippines on Facebook or their website predator-league.com because it will all be there!

Pinoys Take Part on HUAWEI AP Seeds for the Future

This year's edition of Huawei Asia Pacific Seeds for the Future has just started a 9 day training and digital boot camp in the land of the free, Thailand which ran from August 19-27. This is a full blown effort from the mobile phone and aiot product manufacturer which benefited 10 students from our country, the Philippines.

The event was witnessed by government officials of Thailand and several representatives of international organizations, including H.E. Dato Lim Jock Hoi the current Secretary General of the ASEAN. He says that improving digital talent in the region would help drive the different country's vision, taking advantage of what they could learn from private sector work especially when there's a huge demand for it. He lauded Huawei for their relentless work in ICT development and thanked them for the opportunities they've given to various individuals in the Asia Pacific region.

Participants of this year's Seeds for the Future event will be involved in technology training and cross cultural discussions aimed to suggest and resolve social and tech problems in their respective countries and the region. They have also had a lot of female participants this year and certainly shows an increase of very talented and skilled workforce in the region.

Huawei Asia Pacific President Mr. Simon Lin commits to more years of this program which has already been brought to over 140 countries and benefited over 500 universities. When they win the competition in Thailand, they will get the chance to do the accelerator camp in Singapore in order to present their work to industry leaders that would be able to bring their ideas to the real world. Training focused on 5G, Artificial Intelligence and Cloud computing which is current and very beneficial for ICT related work today.

Congratulations to the Filipino participants and to Huawei for instilling skills trainings like this for the increase in ICT professionals in the region. It'll be advantageous for us to invest in this now, and hope this sparks more private companies to help just like Huawei did.