UK PUBG player Luke ‘TeaBone’ Crafer became PUBG Global Championship (PGC) 2021 runner-up on the weekend with his team Heroic.
The European side fell to Chinese team NewHappy, who won the $4.3m tournament and took home more than $1.3m, with Heroic receiving $666m.
PGC 2021 was hosted in South Korea from November 19th to December 19th.
Due to revenue generated by the sale of exclusive in-game items from the PGC 2021 Pick’em Challenge, the total prize pool grew from $2m to over $4.3m.
TeaBone was also named in the All-PGC team, along with jeemzz (Team Liquid), Inonix (Gen.G) and MMing NewHappy.
Other UK players at the tournament included Fexx with Faze and Vard with Team Liquid – the latter team receiving the $20,000 ‘Insane Squad’ accolade.
On day one of the grand finals, five different rosters – Petrichor Road (Asia), NewHappy (Asia), Virtus.pro (Europe), Ence (Europe), and Heroic (Europe) – claimed wins. Heroic finished the opening day top of the pile with an impressive 69 points – their key player TeaBone was the day’s kill leader putting 19 on the scoreboard.
Elsewhere, Team Liquid’s jeemzz gave fans a moment to remember taking out three players with a single grenade in match three.
On day two, NewHappy took two wins with Global Esports Xsset, Gen.G and Heroic also picking up victories. TSM looked good throughout, finishing in the top three on four occasions, but were unable to pick up a win. Heroic remained top of the leaderboard after 10 matches and were closely trailed by NewHappy and Petrichor Road.
Then on the final day, TSM secured the first victory of the day with 11 kills after a hard fought battle against Heroic who took 17. Heroic performed a little within themselves in the second match, taking 0 points, as NewHappy claimed their first win of day three.
Virtus.pro and Kaixin Esports took games three and four – going into the final match NewHappy led with 156 points while Heroic were in second place with 152.
NewHappy hot-dropped Heroic in match 15 but decided not to engage. NewHappy were dispatched to the lobby in 13th position which meant Heroic needed six points to claim the title. Despite working hard they were unable to obtain them. Ence won the final match with six kills, meaning NewHappy were crowned PGC 2021 champions. Heroic, Virtus.pro and TSM finished in second, third and fourth place respectively.
Now that the PGC 2021 has concluded, Krafton CEO CH Kim revealed PUBG’s esports plans for 2022. Like this year, there will be two PUBG Continental Series (PCS) events as well as repeat the PUBG Global Championship tournament at the close of 2022. PCS6 will be held in April 2022 and PCS7 will be held in September.
June 2022 will also see the return of the PUBG Nations Cup (PNC), which was last held in 2019. The international competition where teams from across the globe come together and compete in PUBG to see which region is crowned champion.
The news comes after PUBG rebranded to ‘PUBG: Battlegrounds’ and went free-to-play.
Dom is an award-winning writer and finalist of the Esports Journalist of the Year 2023 award. He graduated from Bournemouth University with a 2:1 degree in Multi-Media Journalism in 2007.
As a long-time gamer having first picked up the NES controller in the late ’80s, he has written for a range of publications including GamesTM, Nintendo Official Magazine, industry publication MCV and others. He worked as head of content for the British Esports Federation up until February 2021, when he stepped back to work full-time on Esports News UK and offer esports consultancy and freelance services. Note: Dom still produces the British Esports newsletter on a freelance basis, so our coverage of British Esports is always kept simple – usually just covering the occasional press release – because of this conflict of interest.
