Epic.LAN is continuous to increase as one of many largest LAN occasions in the UK and has simply introduced the return of Staff Fortress 2 for the upcoming EPIC 45 occasion in Kettering.
The cartoonish first-person shooter was printed by Valve all the way in which again in 2007 however nonetheless has a devoted and lively group to today. A lot in order that British gaming group have voted for EPIC 45 to host an occasion for the 18-year-old sport although this received’t be an esport event.
Whereas EPIC 45 attendees will solely be enjoying the sport for enjoyable, TF2 has an unexpectedly wealthy historical past in UK esports as the sport had a surprisingly massive presence on the now-defunct Insomnia occasions. The truth is, Insomnia 63 hosted the most-watched TF2 occasion ever as over 12,500 Twitch viewers tuned in to tally up greater than 66,000 hours watched for the 2018 event. On high of that, TF2 additionally gathered the loudest crowd at I69 again in 2022 and I55 in 2015 gathered the third-biggest prize pool for a TF2 event ever with £10,000 on the road. The largest TF2 prize pool was £15,000 on the PC Gamer Showdown occasion in London again in 2008.
Alongside TF2, EPIC 45 can even characteristic for-fun group tournaments in WWE 2K25, Forza Horizon 5, and the more and more well-liked GeoGuessr which is basically aggressive Google Maps utilizing the web site’s Avenue View characteristic. As for the esports fanatics, EPIC 45 can even host extremely aggressive tournaments for Counter-Strike 2, Valorant, and StarCraft 2, every with respective four-figure prize swimming pools.
The earlier LAN occasion, EPIC 44, passed off again in February earlier this yr and was Epic.LAN’s largest occasion ever because it performed hosted to quite a few tournaments and occasions together with the finals of the Rainbow Six Siege T2 EU Circuit.
Now, EPIC 45 will happen at Kettering Leisure Village between July seventeenth – July twentieth 2025 with tickets quickly promoting out. Lower than per week in the past, Epic.LAN league ops supervisor Tom ‘Gumpster’ Gumbleton tweeted that solely 170 tickets had been remaining for the occasion which is simply two months away.
In my seven years of esports writing, I’ve introuduced esports protection to newspapers, interviewed among the largest names within the trade, and pushed viewers mad with the puns in my YouTube scripts. I’m most pleased with the latter.
