Serral becomes first non-Korean to win StarCraft 2's biggest prize

Joona “Serral” Sotala has become the first non-Korean to win StarCraft 2's most prestigious tournament, the World Championship Series (WCS).

The Finnish Zerg player was heavy favourite coming in the WCS Global Finals at Blizzcon, having gone undefeated during the tournament's opening week. He cemented his dominance by beating Protoss player Kim “Stats” Dae Yeob 4-2 in the final yesterday.

He took a 3-0 lead in the best-of-seven series before Stats surged back to win the next two games. It wasn't enough to stop Serral, however, who won the sixth game to take a commanding victory.

He was expected to meet Cho “Maru” Seong Ju, considered the world's second best player, in the finals, but Maru was beaten by Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin in the playoffs. Stats went on to sweep sOs in the semis.

You can watch the full final below. Skip to 1:40:00 to watch Serral's final, decisive push—accompanied by some brilliant commentary.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.