This year marks the 5th anniversary of ESL Gaming acquiring the independent Minecraft server/client Badlion! Badlion is a community run project focused around creating a better experience for Minecraft Java Edition users worldwide for free.
Badlion In the Past
Badlion was originally acquired by ESL Gaming from the original owners “Archybot” and “MasterGberry” in 2016. The original vision for Badlion was simple; make esports in Minecraft. The project ran into some road blocks along the way, and eventually the vision was changed in 2018 from a Minecraft minigame server to a Minecraft client paired with anticheat technology. During this transition in 2018 Archybot departed the company and MasterGberry took on the Product Management of the Badlion Client. Under his leadership the Badlion Client grew from a handful of users up to a million monthly users to this day! Starting at the beginning of 2021 we have shifted MasterGberry away from the Badlion project onto other new initiatives. We have brought another long term Minecraft player known as Ginie1 to become the new Product Manager for Badlion Client. Ginie1 had a few words below to share:
"I am very excited to work closely on the Badlion Client project and try to bring it to new heights. The Badlion Client team has a bunch of ideas to innovate the field and create something that has never been seen on Minecraft before. The team is ready to exceed expectations and work hard to achieve our goals and I cannot wait to be part of it."
Badlion Client Today
Badlion Client today has grown into one of the leading 3rd party Minecraft community clients on the internet. It includes features such as over 70 built in mods, the strongest client anti cheat in the Minecraft community, improvements to the core game for a more stable performance, and much more. Badlion Client supports all of the most popular versions of Minecraft Java Edition to create one seamless experience for the players across their favorite versions of Minecraft. It also does regular updates with new mods, further performance improvements, and more awesome features for the Minecraft community to enjoy completely free of charge. ESL Gaming is completely dedicated to the Minecraft community and wants to continue to explore potential opportunities of how to expand the Badlion community by coupling the brand with our other existing products.
Badlion Client Future
We hope to continue to explore how we can bring the world of Minecraft and esports closer together with one another when the pandemic allows us to be able to. We are already looking at some potential offerings of the Badlion community coupled with our new Dreamhack Beyond initiative.
We will continue to work with the community team running Badlion to expand the product, its websites, and the overall offering to the Minecraft community as long as we can continue to do so.
