[March 31, 2016]

Twitch and Super Evil Megacorp Partner for Expanded Vainglory Esports Program

Super Evil Megacorp, maker of the leading touchscreen esport Vainglory, and Twitch, the world's leading social video platform and community for gamers, have inked a three-year partnership in North America and Europe for the official Vainglory Championships and supporting esports structures. The collaboration will include a multi-million dollar investment from each company and a multi-pronged program across sales, promotions, broadcasts and live events.

Vainglory was the fastest growing mobile game on Twitch in 2015, with 150 million minutes viewed. The touchscreen esport was also the largest with a $350,000 prize pool around the world last Fall, and professional teams like TSM, SK Gaming, Team Secret and G2 (News - Alert) Esports joining the fray in the last few months. Vainglory's Winter Championships, which were recently held at Red Bull's esports Studio in Santa Monica, California, and the Gfinity Arena in London, grew its audience more than three times the Autumn Championships, drawing more than 1.5 million views on Twitch.

The Twitch partnership will help better serve the millions of players and fans of Vainglory and its esports teams, and the robust Vainglory support exhibits Twitch's commitment to esports and touchscreen games. Twitch will expand and grow Vainglory's presence with key promotions of Vainglory streamers and esports broadcasts, dedicate a team to help run Vainglory esports events, and build official esports websites, as well as handle sponsorship and merchandise sales.

"The esports industry has been dominated by PC and console titles, but Vainglory is ushering in a new mobile games movement," said Nick Allen, Director of Esports Operations at Twitch. "The incredible engagement Vainglory has garnered on our platform is testament that our community welcomes the convergence of esports and mobile gaming."

Starting today, teams of three players hopeful to win the Spring Championship can register at VaingloryLeague.com. The three-month season kicks off with open qualifiers and will have a total prize pool of $80,000 USD.

"We've been working closely with Twitch since even before the global launch of Vainglory, and their massive, wildly passionate gaming community has helped our game develop a loyal and growing following," said Kristian Segerstrale, COO and executive director at Super Evil Megacorp. "By working with Twitch in this new and expanded capacity, we're going to be able to bring our esports programming to the next level and provide better and more frequent coverage to fans."

Vainglory's Spring Season has today kicked off with a new game mode (in beta) "Battle Royale," a ne hero "Alpha," a new map skin, a massive "Halcyon Days" event and new skins for Fortress. New players will be eased into the game in new, bite-sized tutorial pieces, and the competitive season begins late April. In the beta Battle Royale mode, each player is assigned a random hero, and the game starts with heroes already leveled up, as opposed to starting from level one with a certain hero like in a normal match.

2015 was a momentous year for Vainglory, with more than $350,000 in prize money awarded to players across live events held in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and China. 2016 has already been action-packed, with the North American Winter Season Championships having just taken place at the sold out Red Bull esports Studio in Santa Monica, California, and the European Championships at the Gfinity Arena in London. Amazon and NVIDIA (News - Alert) are two of the key sponsors that have returned this year.

Recently, renowned professional esports organization Team SoloMid (TSM) acquired the reigning North America champions, following a series of recent esports team acquisitions in the Vainglory competitive world, including Team Secret, G2 Esports and SK Gaming. The Vainglory esports scene also includes hundreds of original teams, including home-grown professional teams paying players under contract such as GankStars, Halcyon Hammers and Phoenix eSports.

About Twitch

Twitch is the world's leading social video platform and community for gamers. Each month, more than 100 million community members gather to watch and talk about video games with more than 1.7 million broadcasters. Twitch's video platform is the backbone of both live and on-demand distribution for the entire video game ecosystem. This includes game developers, publishers, media outlets, events, user-generated content and the entire esports scene. Twitch also features Twitch Creative, a category devoted to artists and the creative process. For more information about Twitch, visit the official website and blog.

About Super Evil Megacorp

Super Evil Megacorp is a team of masters-at-their-craft game developers. The company's first title, Vainglory, quickly rose to become the world's largest mobile esport after its global launch in early 2015. In less than a year, Vainglory has held live competitive gaming events in Asia, North America and Europe, and awarded more than $350,000 in prize money. In addition to its success in the esports realm, Vainglory has received top game development honors, including Apple's (News - Alert) "Best Apps" in 2014 and 2015, the Apple Design Award at WWDC, The IMGA's Best Technical Achievement and People's Choice Awards, and the Tabby Award for Best iPad game in the RPG, Simulation and Strategy category. Super Evil Megacorp is based in San Mateo, California. The team is currently 45 people strong and is hiring. Super Evil has raised $41M in funding from backers including General Catalyst, Index Ventures, Signia Venture Partners, Korea Investment Partners, CrossCut Ventures, Initial Capital, The Raine Group, ZhenFund, Yuri Milner and Jim Breyer of Breyer Capital. For more information, visit http://www.superevilmegacorp.com/ and http://www.vainglorygame.com/.

View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160331005326/en/

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