Generation Gaming Esports aka Gen.G are the Mid-Season Invitational 2024 champions of the tournament in Chengdu, China. They won in a convincing fashion with a 3-1 scoreline against the first seed of the LPL Bilibili Gaming. The sensational win was also Gen.G’s star player Chovy’s first-ever (and long awaited) international trophy and Gen.G’s first MSI win.
Despite the home field advantage, Bilibili Gaming struggled to match Gen.G, resulting in a 3-1 win in the grand final of MSI from the latter. The result was, however, expected given Gen.G’s foothold over the meta and their overall macro being leaps and bounds over any other team if not maybe Bilibili Gaming.
Hailing from the powerhouse league from Korea’s LCK, Gen.G were favored to win the event from the beginning. The roster was something of a super-team in League of Legends and has lived up to its expectations. In the opening round of the MSI bracket stage, they defeated Fnatic in a decisive fashion in a 3-0 scoreline before taking down Top Esports 3-2 in the next round.
Later on, they matched up against Bilibili for the first time in the winner's bracket final and scored a well deserved 3-1 win in order to secure a place in the final. Yet, many expected Bilibili to learn from their mistakes and thus, come back stronger and battle it out as the top 2 team in the world.
Bilibili had a rough run to the final, taking out PSG Talon and world champions T1 in the upper bracket before being dropped to the lower bracket for a rematch with T1 for the final spot. They again triumphed over T1 in a close 3-2 series to meet GenG. again to fight for the trophy.
The first two games started with hefty brawls from each side but Gen.G came out ahead in game 1 with superior macro and punishing capability in late game and getting an early lead and building upon it to close out the game the second time. Game 3, BLG struck back with an early game win to snowball into the nexus being destroyed. Game four turned from what would have been a simple Gen.G win to an epic game off the back of a big Baron steal from Bilibili. Despite the late stages being a very close battle where either team could’ve won,In the late stages, Gen.G emerged victorious, on their way to win MSI.
In game two, Gen.G’s botlane carry Kim ‘Peyz’ Su-hwan set a new all-time kill record in a single game at a top level international event with a staggering total of 28, breaking the previous record of 18. It was a dominant performance, although it was stalled out with one big play from Bilibili in the late game, additionally helping Peyz achieve such a high kill count in a match that was fairly one-sided.The win at MSI resulted in Gen.G taking home the $50,000 first-place prize but more importantly, automatic qualification to the League of Legends World Championship, set to culminate in London, England at the end of the year. Bilibili took home $40,000 for second with T1 getting $30,000 for third, along with Europe’s powerhouse G2 Esports rounding out the top four with a $25,000 prize.
