The competitive video games sector has grown so much in popularity in the past few months, and we’ve seen a lot of the professional gamers receive the type of celebrity treatments that sports stars get. This was made more evident in what happened in the last few days when a Dota 2 professional gamer’s chair was sold at a cost that is much more than what signed football jerseys from Wayne Rooney and Lionel Messi were sold for.
In the last decade, gaming celebrities have popped up all over the world and across a variety of gaming platforms. Whether it’s playing at Fortnite, World of Warcraft or streaming themselves playing at CSGO gambling sites for real money or skins betting, the genre has taken off and gained popularity in recent years.
It was the legendary OG player named Jesse “JerAx” Vainikka that donated his signed chair to be sold in an online auction organized in conjunction with the Valavuori Live Twitch broadcast from Finland in an attempt to raise money for the European “Save the Children” association, in a program that saw many other valuables from different people released for auction.
Just a few hours and the auction was over, with the signed gaming chair from the two times International winner and the former OG champion selling for a whopping €5,300. It ended up outpacing all other valuables brought for auction, with a shirt signed by Lionel Messi who stands as one of the best footballers in the history of the game in the globe selling for just €2,300.
Also, a signed shirt of the former Manchester United star and legend, Wayne Rooney raked in €4,500 at the auction, because of its amazing classic value to Manchester United fans. However, that amount is still below what the Dota 2 game chair of the professional gamer raked in. It should be noted that the player hanged his keypads this year after an amazing Dota 2 game with the best Dota2 team in the world.
On the funny side of it, there is a Team Liquid logo on the gaming chair that was sold, and that means a logo of the biggest and most bitter rival of the OG that did not succeed in the last 9 international grand finals, after the two teams were engaged in a very fiery match. So, if that chair had an OG logo on it, the value may have gone unimaginably high.
Irrespective of the comparisons between these amazing athletes, the fact that these important properties were donated to such a noble cause is commendable, especially now that the human race is under a major health crisis, which is negatively affecting the competitive video games sector. The majority of events slated for 2020 have been cancelled, and most of the gamers can only play online at the moment.
But the video game sector was also available to keep many people busy while they were locked down, with the number of new players increasing massively. One example here is that the game named Fortnite raked in 3.2 billion hours playing time in April alone, while a new record was also achieved by the game hardware companies. For instance, Nintendo Switch made a double sales record, getting 200% more sales in the last quarter alone.
