In India, Call of Duty Mobile (CODM) has managed to grab several esports organizations’ attention. Earlier on 4 March 2021, S8UL Esports, an Indian Esports organisation, announced its Call of Duty Mobile roster. And now, within two weeks, S8UL Esports has announced that the organisation has bid farewell to the same COD Mobile lineup.
S8UL initially took to its official Instagram handle to announce the changes but late today it has removed the post. However we have managed to collect the screenshot of the story post thanks to Sportskeeda.
Max, the manager of the lineup posted: “The lineup has not been disbanded, the roster will remain the same for us.”
Monk also posted on Instagram.
The S8UL COD Mobile lineup was one of the top teams in the country. It secured the second position in the Call of Duty Mobile India Cup, a Rs 35 lakh major tournament.
Call Of Duty Mobile is a free-to-play shooter/battle royale mobile version of the famous PC game – Call of Duty, developed by Timi Studios and published by Activision for Android and iOS.
The game on release reached 100 million downloads within the first week of its launch. CODM completed its first anniversary on 1 October 2020 and the game generated $480 million in revenue. Because of that, many organisations are venturing into the scene to give it more boost across the country. Esports organisation Skyesports hosted Grandslam CODM tournament in May 2020 when the game was at peak. Adding to that, BlitzkriegXP also shared to us earlier that they are observing CODM landscape in India post PUBG Mobile ban. Post PUBG ban, many fans replaced it with Free Fire and CODM according to IGL.
Despite that, numbers of scrims and esports tournaments around CODM are quite less in number compared to Free Fire and others. Although Loco had partnered for CODM India cup earlier, there is still less content on the platform. In fact when we asked the game streaming platform Loco why there are less scrims and tournaments on the platform, they shared that they are aiming to boost the game more in the future with more tournaments and content.
What can be the reason for CODM esports’ slow pace? According to our observation, there can be multiple factors.
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Since the launch of Call of Duty: Mobile in March 2019, Activision has been listed as the publisher of note, but there has been a bit of confusion whether Tencent published the game in other regions, such as India. Considering the initial Indian media coverage of the game (when it was released at the end of 2019 and in early 2020), it can be noticed that the Indian games and esports journalists have consistently written that Tencent is the publisher. That is why, when PUBG MOBILE was banned many were surprised that Call of Duty: Mobile was not included alongside it. And the confusion continues, so the marketers are not investing much on it.
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The launch of Valorant grabbed all the eyeballs because of the fascinating abilities added to a shooting game which resulted in many organisations focusing more on Valorant than CODM.
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Already post PUBG Mobile ban, Garena Free Fire took over the popularity due its similarities with the PUBG Mobile gameplay which might have overshadowed CODM whose multiplayer modes are more versatile than its battle royale mode.
The accurate reason is still unknown to us but we do want this game to shine in the Indian esports industry.