Smite, the MOBA that throws players into the battleground of the gods, has announced that the prize pool for its upcoming World Championship tournament has reached $1 million.
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Like other notable eSports tournaments, Smite's prize pool was largely built up by developer Hi-Rez Studios using a crowdfunding approach. For the past several week's, the developer has been unveiling new "Odyssey items," special in-game items and character skins whose profits are earmarked for the prize pool of the World Championship. These Odyssey items are exclusive to this event, giving the player base more incentive to buy and, in turn, driving the tournament's prize pool up.
Using this method, Smite's player base has increased the World Championship prize pool by hundreds of thousands of dollars, and the Odyssey event isn't even over. According to the official site, less than half of the Odyssey items have been revealed. Hi-Rez has revealed special items for only three of the game's seven pantheons, with Roman Norse and Chinese god players getting access to fresh character skins and ward skins. More love will be coming to Indian, Greek, Egyptian and Mayan gods in the coming weeks.
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Only four video game franchises have offered a single-event prize pool of a million dollars or more. @Smitegame is one of them.
— HiRezStew (@schisam) October 8, 2014
The Odyssey event is slowly leading up to the Smite World Championship, which will be held in Atlanta on January 9.
Smite is free to play for PC. An Xbox One port is also in the works.
