Valve’s anti-cheating software, known as VAC, monitors public Counter-Strike matches for evidence of cheating, like aim assist or changing value modifiers. Traditionally, any pros found cheating have been barred from competing in tournaments, but one organizer has decided to let them back in. ESL, originally Electronic Sports League, updated its Counter-Strike rulebooktoday, to allow VAC-banned…
This weekend held many different events in some of the biggest esports, from League of Legends and Street Fighter to Call of Duty. In a small arcade tucked away in Akihabara, Japan, however, players were duking it out in some of the best bouts I’ve seen all weekend, in a language I don’t understand and…
A new Overwatch team is set to make its debut on the international stage. Laser Kittenz is made up of the former Bench Boys roster and two other players, and the team will be looking to establish itself in the upcoming Overwatch League. In a report from ESPN Esports, the team says it is currently…
Hearthstone is often thought of as a one-on-one card game, but in the Trinity Series, teams battle each other rather than single players. In last night’s final matches of the tournament, four teams converged to see whose decklist could outlast the others’. Where most Hearthstone tournaments bracket individual players into a best-of-five format, having to…
“I wanted a game that hated me.” That was how Sean Plott, also known as “Day9” in the professional gaming world, described the allure of Dota 2. Plott had made a name for himself in the days of StarCraft, where he taught players new and old how to better themselves at the strategy game. Now,…
Dota 2 uses terrain height in a unique way: depending on the distance, it can cause attacks to miss, provide a vision advantage, or in this case, trap an enemy player on a cliff for a long, long time. In the winner’s finals of the CIS regional qualifiers for the Kiev Major, Virtus.pro and Team…
Rivalries drive esports, and there’s few places with better beef than the fighting game community, or FGC. Joshua “Wolfkrone” Philpot and Kenneth “KBrad” Bradley’s ongoing feud came to a head last night at Final Round 20 in Atlanta, Georgia, and the resulting conclusion could be called the “pop-off heard ‘round the world.” It’s hard to…
Several core members of the BEAST crew, an organization that hosts an annual Super Smash Bros. tournament, announced their departure today in the wake of sexual harassment allegations brought against BEAST head organizer Lolex. In a statement posted on the r/smashbros subreddit, the group says they were shocked and upset to learn about Lolex’s behavior,…
The regional qualifiers for the next Dota 2 major have been exciting, with over 100 matches played in the last 48 hours. The Kiev Major boasts a prize pool of $3 million, and so everybody and their grandmother has been competing to earn a spot, including one team that made a desperate move to somewhere…
Riot Games has laid out a tentative road map for League of Legends updates coming in 2017. In a new “Riot Pls,” lead producer New001 goes over the checklist, including changes to runes and phasing out the old Adobe Air client.
Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng will be playing for Team Liquid for the rest of the League of Legends spring split, after a last-minute trade from Team SoloMid earlier this week. The game’s all-time leader regular season kills, he’ll need to start racking them up in a hurry. The trade mirrors the concept of loaning out players…
The qualifying system for Dota 2‘s majors has its roots in an egalitarian impulse where—theoretically—a team of amateurs could win an open and then regional qualifier, and find themselves competing in a major against professionals. But for the upcoming Kiev Major, that egalitarian has ran smack dab into the reality of tournaments with only one…
As long-running games evolve, the older bits of design begin to show their rust. For a game with a lifespan like League of Legends, which has been around for almost a decade, there’s plenty of old gears that don’t turn like they used to. One of those rusty bits, Galio, is next up to receive…
During last week’s North American League of Legends Championship Series matches, FlyQuest drafted a Mordekaiser pick for their marksman player Johnny “Altec” Ru. It was a potent pick for the team in their match against Envy, winning both games in FlyQuest’s 2-1 victories. As an astute Reddit user familiar with Mordekaiser pointed out, though, the…
Clacking keys; mashing buttons; running joysticks up and down in precise, intricate patterns. The motions of playing a video game are mechanical—frequent and repetitive—and suggest a machine at work, which is of course not far off, especially with the best players in the world routinely spending 12 hours a day playing a game. Now, physical…
Champions of the most recent Counter-Strike: Global Offensive major, Astralis chalked up another tournament win today in Katowice, Poland at the Intel Extreme Masters, defeating FaZe 3-1. FaZe put up a fight all the way up until the last round, where a tense 16-13 on the Inferno map came down to several close firefights for…
Jun “TY” Tae Yang doesn’t have the illustrious career of many other StarCraft pros. Despite playing the game for a decade, since the age of 12, Jun had never won a premier event until January. Today, at Intel Extreme Masters Katowice, Jun took his second-ever first place finish at a premier, besting the top player…
Several Dota 2 teams that participated in last November’s Northern Arena BEAT Invitational have yet to see their prize money from the tournament, and the tournament organizer and event production staff say they haven’t been paid for their services either. According to a report from theScore Esports, several Dota 2 teams, including Complexity Gaming, Alliance,…
The Street Fighter V Red Bull Proving Grounds are back for 2017. The amateur league will feature regional teams from cities like Houston, Seattle, Los Angeles, Chicago and Atlanta, where local talent can make their mark on the scene and earn a shot at the Proving Grounds title. See the full list of locales and…
Chae “Piglet” Gwang-jin is one of the most well-known marksman players in League. Having won the Season 3 World Championships on Korean team SK Telecom T1, he’s proved himself as one of the best in his role—now, he’s defining his position in a new lane. Earlier this week, Chae’s current squad Team Liquid confirmed the…
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