Invitationals & The Future of Minecraft Events

Over the past year, a shift has happened within the Minecraft Event Community.

You may wonder what I am talking about. Well it’s Invitationals.

Events have slowly shifted from running events monthly, to running events pretty much weekly with people sponsoring these events.

Prices depend on the event, so here is a few prices.

• Pandora’s Box: $1100
• BlockWars: $3000
• Chamber Trials: $500
• Klyx Games: $500

As you can see, these events clearly make a ton of money.

There have been ~30 Chamber Trials Invitational events (earned $15,000), and ~42 Pandora’s Box events (earned $46,200). This is according to a reddit post.

BlockWars has made up to $48,000, which is the highest estimate as we don’t know how much each event was charged for (ie: Lads Remix could have been charged more or less then 3000, we don’t know)

I for a while haven’t been the biggest fan of invitationals, but over time I have slowly realized that these kind of events can be needed for an event to survive. Now, do I think Pandora’s Box needs $46,000 for Counter Push & PB to be hosted? No. But that doesn’t mean the costs can get high.

My main problem with invitationals is that over time events may start to exclusively run invitationals, as is the case of Pandora’s Box. It has been on hiatus for a while, and has mainly hosted a ton of invitationals.

Events as a whole are something that shouldn’t just be for whoever can pay the most, it should be for anyone to enjoy.

In total, I am personally indifferent to Invitationals as a way to make some money to keep the servers online. Although, I am very much worried that events will turn into exclusively invitationals, which in my opinion is bad.