Kolex is the company behind the new Esports World Cup Trading Card Collection, and its background matters for understanding why this set works differently from a typical trading card release.
The company previously operated under the name EPICS and has built esports collectibles since roughly 2017-2018, founded by a team with prior experience building Xfire, LoLking.net, Esportsify, and the digital marketplace Skinz.gg.
What sets Kolex apart isn't just its roster of licensing deals, it's a QR-code-driven digital twin system that pairs every physical card with a companion digital version inside its own app.
Here is what that physical-plus-digital model actually does, and why it counts as a genuinely different collectible structure rather than a marketing gimmick bolted onto a normal card.
Kolex's team came out of Xfire, LoLking.net, Esportsify, and Skinz.gg, all companies rooted in online gaming communities and digital marketplaces rather than traditional print collectibles. That background shaped the company's entire approach to trading cards from day one, treating the physical card as only half of the product.
Operating first as EPICS and later rebranding to Kolex, the company has spent several years building licensing relationships across esports organizations before landing the Esports World Cup partnership.
Before the EWC deal, Kolex built a Signature Series collection with SK Gaming around Gamescom 2023, distributing thousands of signed cards that each paired a physical autograph with a digital collectible. That partnership gave Kolex real experience running a hybrid physical-digital program at scale before taking on a tournament as large as the Esports World Cup.
That track record is part of why EWC structured its own deal as an explicit multi-year partnership rather than a single licensed drop.
Every physical Kolex card carries a QR code on the back. Scanning it unlocks a digital twin of that exact card inside the Kolex app, where collectors can log points, climb leaderboards, and unlock rewards tied to live tournament performance.
That twin isn't a generic digital badge, it's tied to the specific physical card scanned, which is part of why protecting the card itself, QR code included, matters even for a copy you don't plan to resell. A card stored loose in a drawer is more likely to pick up scuffs that make that code harder to scan cleanly.
A standard trading card's value lives entirely in the physical object: its condition, its rarity, and whatever the secondary market decides it's worth. Kolex's digital twin layer adds a second, ongoing utility on top of that physical value, since the app-side rewards and leaderboard standing continue to matter after the card itself is already in hand.
That's a meaningfully different collecting experience than flipping through a traditional binder, since part of the card's appeal lives inside an app rather than purely on the cardstock.
The first 100 individually numbered copies of every EWC base card include a digital twin as a built-in feature of that specific print run. Numbering a physical card and pairing it with a digital twin is Kolex's way of making an early, low-numbered pull meaningfully different from copy number 4,000 of the same card.
Collectors chasing those early numbers should slide them into an inner-sleeve first and then into a dedicated binder page rather than mixing them loosely with higher-numbered duplicates, since distinguishing a numbered copy at a glance gets harder once cards start piling up together.
A physical-plus-digital hybrid raises a real question that traditional cards never had to answer: what happens to the digital half if the app itself eventually changes or shuts down. Kolex hasn't published long-term guarantees on that point in any coverage we found, so it's worth treating the digital layer as a current bonus rather than a permanent guarantee when deciding how much of a card's value to attribute to it.
The physical card itself remains a real, standalone collectible either way, which is the safer long-term framing for anyone building a collection around this set.
EPICS.
Scanning a QR code on the physical card unlocks a matching digital version inside the Kolex app.
Yes, a Signature Series collection with SK Gaming around Gamescom 2023.
Only the first 100 individually numbered copies of each base card include one as a built-in feature.
Whatever the app side eventually does, the physical card in your hand is the part you control today. Keep numbered pulls organized in EVORETRO 9-Pocket Binder Pages so they stay easy to find and easy to protect.
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