| Esports at the 2022 Asian Games | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Venue | Hangzhou Esports Center |
| Dates | 24 September – 2 October 2023 |
| Competitors | 475 from 30 nations |
Esports at the 2022 Asian Games were held at Hangzhou Esports Center in Hangzhou, China from 24 September to 2 October 2023. [1] [2] [3]
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This was the first edition of the Asian Games that featured esports as a medal event, after debuting as a demonstration sport in 2018, and the second major multi-sport event to do so after the SEA Games since 2019. [4] [5] AliSports, the sports arm of Chinese multinational technology company, Alibaba Group, partnered with the Olympic Council of Asia to bring esports to the Asian Games. [6]
A qualification tournament called AESF Road to Asian Games 2022 was played earlier for all titles featured. [7] The results of this tournament were also used to determine the countries' seedings for the upcoming Games, with no participants being eliminated through this event.
A total of 8 medal events in esports were planned along with 2 demonstration events focused in robotics and VR, all of them within the mind sports category. [8] [9] But in March 2023, the Olympic Council of Asia approved a decision to remove Hearthstone from the announced list of events due to the closure of Blizzard service in mainland China. [10]
Two demonstration events AIES Robot Sports – Ultimate Battle Robots and AIES XR Sports – Steelraid were held after the Asian Games on 11 and 12 November 2023. [11]
