It was a record-breaking week for Duels.com, the massively multiplayer online player vs. player (PVP) game developed by Austin game studio Challenge Online Games, Inc. (Challenge Games). Not only did the game host its 200,000,000th (yes, that’s two hundred millionth) battle, but a new World Duels Champion was crowned after a tournament that shattered year over year records.

The championship ladder opened Tuesday, May 12 at 1pm EDT and nearly 3,000 competitors from 70 countries battled it out for two weeks. With double the participants from last year and nearly four times the amount of matches, it was a fierce, record-breaking competition to be last man standing. In the end, Duelist David Johnson (a.k.a. “Exponential”) was crowned 2009 World Duels Champion and took home $2000 in cash and prizes. Runner-up Duelist Andy Foote (a.k.a. O.J. Simpson) took home $1000 in cash and prizes. Each finalist will also have the opportunity to design a new item to be included in Duels.

“Reaching the 200-millionth milestone during the 2009 World Duels Championship added an exclamation point to an already phenomenal event,” says Christian Primozich, Executive Producer of Duels. “From me and the entire Duels team, two hundred million thanks to all of the Duelists who brought their A-game and participated in the 2009 WDC. Duels continues to have the most amazing community of gamers on the Internet, and the bar has been set very high for 2010!”

With half a million players worldwide, Duels is an online strategy game where players build powerful characters based on physical attributes, battle experience, special abilities and collectible items. Unlike many online strategy games which require hours of grinding play to achieve player power and status, Duels is designed to provide compelling in-depth PVP, head-to-head game play in 10 to 30 minute increments, attracting both hardcore and casual gamers for quick-fix gaming.