STOCKHOLM — Premier gaming lifestyle festival
DreamHack returns to Austin, Texas
Friday, June 1–Sunday, June 3, 2018 at the
Austin Convention Center. The 24-hour-a-day, non-stop festival will be jam-packed with more than $400,000 in pro esports tournaments, amateur and varsity gaming tournaments, the world-famous 24-hour LAN party, music concert, cosplay championship and more. Full details
here.
Austin played host to DreamHack’s inaugural U.S. tour in 2016 — and again in 2017. Following the Austin festival in June, DreamHack’s second and final U.S. stop will be Atlanta in November.
“We’re thrilled to bring DreamHack back to the great city of Austin,” said DreamHack Chief Executive Officer Marcus Lindmark. “This year’s festival promises to be bigger and better than ever — from the PUBG Showdown to the FGC tournaments; from our 24-hour-a-day LAN party, to live EDM music and Cosplay Championship with the iconic Yaya Han — the DreamHack experience truly has no equal.”
DreamHack is a gaming lifestyle festival where communities from throughout the gaming ecosystem come together for a three-day-weekend of gaming lifestyle events. DreamHack Austin features a 24-hour-a-day Local Area Network (LAN) party; esports gaming competitions; university matches; stream studio; console, PC and arcade games; tabletop games; expo; Cosplay championship; art gallery; indie game zone; main stage with live music (Friday night); panel discussions, workshops and keynote speakers; and a host of other activities. Gamers can participate or watch professionals compete in esports tournaments with hundreds of thousands of prize dollars on the line.
Major titles will include: $100,000 PLAYERUNKNOWN’S BATTLEGROUNDS (PUBG), $100,000 Counter-Strike: Global Offensive (CS;GO), $100,000 Starcraft II, $50,000 Rainbow Six Siege, and $50,000 in FGC tournament prizes spread across: Super Smash Bros. Melee, Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition, Dragon Ball FighterZ, Tekken 7 and more. Additional community tournaments include: Rocket League, League of Legends, Clash Royale and more to be announced (full details here).
DreamHack Austin Highlights
PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds
PUBG has taken the gaming world by storm, and a $100,000 tournament at DreamHack will feature squads with all Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) participants having a chance, onsite, to earn a slot in the main competition. In addition, online players will have a chance to qualify for the competition and earn their way to DreamHack Austin. Additional details regarding online qualification, BYOC qualification, schedules and more will be released soon. Stay tuned to the DreamHack Austin website and the DreamHack PUBG Twitter and Facebook channels to stay up to date.
DreamHack Open Counter-Strike: Global Offensive
The DreamHack Open pro-am circuit is now in its 7th year and Austin is on its list of 8 international stops in 2018, with $100,000 on the line. The event will consist of six direct invites, issued to teams based on merits through ranking and results. Teams will have the chance to qualify for the remaining two slots via online qualifiers, one held in the European region and in North America (full announcement here).
Cosplay
DreamHack Austin’s “Cosplay Championship” will achieve an all new level with the arrival of celebrity head judge Yaya Han joining the team. Yaya Han® is one of only a few cosplayers in the world to build a business in this hobbyist community, but even after a decade of success, she strives to stay true to what got her into this field originally — fun and creativity. To this day, Yaya has made over 375 costumes, appeared as a guest at hundreds of events around the globe, and been featured in two U.S. network TV shows. Yaya is the first cosplayer to create a cosplay-focused fabric line for Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft Stores; the first to design a cosplay patterns line for a major pattern company, McCall Patterns; and the first cosplayer to launch a sewing machine with Bernina Sewing Machine Company.
University Esports
DreamHack and the AVGL College Series will host a nationwide, online League of Legends qualifying league with grand finals held in Austin — along with League of Legends grudge matches and a Rocket League tournament featuring regional teams.
The League of Legends online league will launch on March 30 with matches streamed on Fridays and Sundays at 8pm EST on Twitch.tv/avgl, in partnership with Twitch Student, a supporter of the Collegiate Series. The top two teams will travel to Austin to compete in the Grand Finals on June 2 and will be broadcasted at Twitch.tv/dreamhack. Colleges participating in the league include: Pennsylvania State University, Arizona State University, University of Utah, Baylor University, Robert Morris University, Kansas State University, and the University of Colorado Boulder, among others. In addition, AVGL will host League of Legends grudge matches and a Rocket League tournament among local Texas college rivals on June 1 and 2. Participants will include Texas A&M, The University of Texas at Dallas, The University of Texas at Austin, and Louisiana State University.
Also in the Student Zone is DreamHack’s “Student Game Showcase” which gives student game developers a space to display their latest gaming projects and “market test” them with DreamHack gaming enthusiasts all weekend long. It’s also a great opportunity for students to make connections in the gaming industry.
Live Music
On Friday, June 1, DreamHack will bring three of today’s EDM sensations to the stage in Austin: Krewella, Pegboard Nerds and Tokyo Machine.
Hailing from Chicago, the Pakistani electronic sister duo Krewella are active vocal inspirations through their music and editorials. Jahan and Yasmine Yousaf represent empowerment: personified work ethic that transcended racial and gender stigmas to achieve their dreams. From heavy rock and dance influences, the girls burst onto the scene as female pioneers of a male-dominated industry. Their bold fashion and rebellious swag inspired their obsessed following, affectionately self-named as the #KREW. With almost 10M in social following, they have inspired millions of current youth to chase their dreams. With a platinum hit ‘Alive’, their evolution into a live rock / dance hybrid act spotlights Krewella’s rare ability to play both acoustic live sets and raucous Las Vegas club residencies. They are one of the more unique music performances and experiences, and are primed to break new ground that no South Asian act ever has.
Electronic duo Pegboard Nerds concocted exuberant future bass fit for dancefloors, bright anime, or kinetic video games (a major influence on their visual aesthetic). Their sound — a little future bass, a little dubstep, a lot of chiptune — was the inspired amalgam of Alexander Odden (Norway) and Michael Parsberg-Hansen (Denmark), a pair of producers whose stage name is an anagram of their last names. Starting in 2005, they released a string of EPs and remixes, including a pair of collaborations with Splitbreed. A decade into their pairing, they started a campaign in 2015 called Operation Pink Cloud, aimed at ending breast cancer. The Pink Cloud EP featured guest turns from Max Collins, Johnny Graves, and Jonny Rose. Their fourth EP, Nerds by Nature, arrived in early 2017 and debuted in the Top 15 of Billboard’s Electronic Albums chart.
A moniker with a unique brand of EDM, Tokyo Machine combines endearing Japan-infused, 8-bit sounds with vicious, heavy basslines. His music has earned millions of plays, featurings in video games and TV, thousands of die hard fans all over the world and the support from the likes of Martin Garrix, David Guetta, Dillon Francis, Afrojack, Slushii, Herobust and dozens more. Since his debut show at EDC Las Vegas in 2017, Tokyo Machine has established himself as a chiptune stage-beast, who, alongside his little Tokimon friends, steals the show on every continent.
Additional Information
Tickets
