Online gaming enthusiasts who descended in large numbers to witness the country’s largest online PC gaming championships, which opened here at the consumer electronics and technology show Plugged IN (November 14-16), were in for a big treat.

First, they got to see and interact with two internationally-renowned gamers: Ioann ‘Edward’ Sukhariev, who specialises in Counter-Strike, and Gleb ‘Funn1k’ Lipatnikov, who specialises in DOTA 2. Both play professionally for Natus Vincere (NAVI Team), earn approximately $300,000 each in prize money annually, and hail from the Ukraine.

Second, telecom services provider MTS India launched GAMEGOD, India’s first online, multiplayer, video gaming platform, which will support up to 50,000 gamers playing simultaneously across the country.

“Before this, all Indian gamers connected to other competing global players through servers located in Singapore and Dubai. Now that we have installed Ranked Servers in our data centre in Noida to support two internationally successful games — Counter Strike Global Offensive (CS: GO) and DOTA 2 — Indian gamers will have access to high-quality Internet connectivity that ensures very low latency, necessary to play multiplayer online games. We will add more servers as the number of gamers increase,” Leonid Musatov, Chief Marketing & Brand Officer, MTS India, told BusinessLine .

India has 80,000 CS: GO players and 200,000 DOTA 2 players.

The Gaming Championship, which will have 2,000 gamers and 160 teams from across the country competing for ₹20 lakh in prize money, will conclude on Sunday. GAMEGOD kits priced at ₹1,299 and ₹4,499 (fully loaded) will be available on e-commerce site Flipkart.

“While most telecom service providers average 20 per cent of their revenues from non-voice services, 38 per cent of our overall revenue comes from non-voice. The idea is to take this to 50 per cent, like some telecom service providers in Japan and Korea are doing,” said Musatov.

He said there is a big opportunity for online gaming in India. However, the country lacks the necessary infrastructure and is lagging behind China, which has 2 million gamers playing simultaneously. Also, there are no gaming leagues or clubs in India and most of the gamers end up playing at Internet cafes.

More titles on cards

MTS India is looking to add five more gaming titles on the GAMEGOD platform in six months and is looking to develop some casual mobile games. It has also launched a Gaming Premium Membership, where gamers will have access to a community server.

Gamers can book slots to play matches with friends. There will be weekly/monthly online tournaments with prize money. To become a member, gamers have to register with a fee in the form of a membership card to be renewed every month.

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