Esports

League of Legends Has Flipped Its Metagame On Its Head

For a long time, League of Legends has had a consistent metagame. But the competitive environment and the individual and team strategies that result have recently changed at a rapid pace, leading to earlier fights, faster games, and a wild shift in the way players try to out-pick and out-play each other. League is one…

Overwatch League Team Completes Glorious 0-40 Season, Is Possibly Shittiest Pro Sports Team In World History

The first 12 team slots in the Overwatch League cost, reportedly, $20 million each. This was mostly because at least a dozen rich people were willing to give that much money to Blizzard, but was also at least in part to avoid situations like the ongoing disgrace that is the Miami Marlins, where a cash-poor…

Sudden Dota 2 Update Wreaks Havoc On Qualifier Tournament

The North American open qualifiers for the 2018 Dota 2 International were off to the races yesterday, with dozens of games being played to determine who would take a regional spot. And then along came a patch containing Dota 2‘s new battle royale mode, and everything fell apart. A Dota 2 patch pushed yesterday included…

Smash Bros. Pros Are Finally Feeling The Love From Nintendo

LOS ANGELES—Paper streamers fluttered down on Smash champion Gonzalo “Zero” Barrios in the red light of a former burlesque theater in downtown Los Angeles. Barrios, the world’s best Super Smash Bros. Wii U player, winked at the camera and flashed a peace sign. Nintendo had invited him, along with seven other pro Super Smash Bros.…

Dragon Ball FighterZ Is Suddenly Wide Open

Beyond the Summit held its first traditional fighting game event this last weekend, inviting 16 Dragon Ball FighterZ players to Southern California for a four-day tournament. But even with competitors like Dominique “SonicFox” McLean, Goichi “GO1” Kishida, and Sho “Fenritti” Shoji in attendance, one surprising figure stood alone as champion when all was said and…

Dragon Ball Player Microwaves His Cereal Milk, Shattering My View Of Breakfast Forever

While this weekend’s Summit of Power rages on at the Beyond the Summit house, one factoid has been haunting me. During Thursday’s events, Vineeth “ApologyMan” Meka was caught on camera, warming up his cereal milk in the microwave. Yes, that is correct. It’s hot cereal. The tech, according to ApologyMan, is to microwave your bowl…

The eight teams directly invited to this year’s Dota 2 International have been confirmed. The top eight of the Dota pro circuit move on with a guaranteed ticket to Vancouver. For everyone else, the open qualifiers kick off in just four days, leading into the regionals starting June 18.

Lord Yamcha Proves Himself In Dragon Ball FighterZ Comeback

Yamcha has not had the best luck in Dragon Ball. He was once a lord and a threat, but by Super his lagging power level became a gag. You wouldn’t know it watching Ryota “Kazunoko” Inoue play him in Dragon Ball FighterZ, though. During a match at this weekend’s Summit of Power, Kazunoko was reduced…

The Weekend In Esports: Rev Your Engines

Yes, it may be E3 weekend, but there are still some video game competitions going down. Esports rests for no press conferences! In London, the world championship for Rocket League is underway. Over in Los Angeles at the Beyond the Summit house, the best in the world at Dragon Ball FighterZ are competing in the…

New Jersey Added A Last-Minute Esports Betting Ban And No One Knows Why

On May 14, 2018, when the Supreme Court overturned the ban on sports betting, New Jersey legislators hurried to update the state’s 2014 sports betting law. Back in 2014, Jersey lawmakers had passed a law permitting sports betting at casinos and racetracks, but the law couldn’t go into effect until the Supreme Court overturned the…

Piccolo Is ‘Too Much Fun’ For This Dragon Ball FighterZ Star To Give Up

Four months ago, Eduardo “HookGangGod” Deno had never entered a tournament in person. He had been shooting up the leaderboards in Persona 4 Arena and Guilty Gear for years while preferring to risk frame delays and shaky network connections. But Dragon Ball FighterZ got the self-described “online monster” to see if tournament play was worth…

It’s Hard To Look Away From The Overwatch League’s 0-37 Team

After last night, the Shanghai Dragons are 0-37 in the Overwatch League. That’s longer than any losing streak in the history of the big four North American pro sports—worse than the 1976-77 Bucs and Process Sixers losing 26 and 28 games over two seasons. Worse than the Louisville Colonels losing 26 straight in 1889. They…

Zoning In Overwatch Can Actually Work

Who among us has not insisted that we were “zoning” after spending an ultimate attack in Overwatch that didn’t hit anyone on the other team? Of course it was your intention all along to scatter the other team away from the area—actually killing them is for meatheads. We’re refined gamers, just like DPS/flex player Hae-seong…

The New Mario Tennis Is Definitely A Fighting Game

After taking Mario Tennis Aces out for a spin during last weekend’s limited beta, I’ve reached the definitive conclusion that the beloved sports franchise has turned into a fighting game like Street Fighter, Tekken, or Guilty Gear Mario Tennis, which debuted as Mario’s Tennis on the Virtual Boy in 1995, started out as a fairly…

Deaf Overwatch League Fan Comes Up With Custom Signs For Heroes

In Overwatch, sound is key. Aural cues tell you when enemies and allies are using their ultimates, and (good) teams regularly coordinate over voice chat. For deaf fans, those are some pretty big hurdles to get over whether they’re playing or watching. 14-year-old Danik Soudakoff is a deaf Overwatch League fan who was recently spotlighted…

BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle Is Dead Simple By Design

Since its debut in 2008, the BlazBlue franchise has enjoyed a decade of serious growth, with four mainline installments, various revisions, and an expansive cast that rivals even its Arc System Works cousin Guilty Gear. The latest game, BlazBlue: Cross Tag Battle, is a two-on-two crossover fighter that landed in North America today. With characters…

It’s A Good Time For A Street Fighter III Revival

The recently released Street Fighter 30th Anniversary collection has led me to playing a lot more Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike. I wasn’t expecting this. The new collection rounds up 12 Street Fighter games from the past three decades and allows ranked and casual online matches for four of them: Turbo: Hyper Fighting, Super Turbo,…

How The New York Excelsior Took Over The Overwatch League

The New York Excelsior is the best Overwatch team in the world. Despite an always-shifting metagame and one of its best players sitting out nearly a third of the season so far, they’ve won two Overwatch League stages and made the playoffs for the third. They rarely drop games and have swept every team in…

Major changes are coming to the Dota Pro Circuit next year, including no more hard roster lock periods during the season, owners can only field one team for The International, and majors and minors getting paired off. Valve says its goal is to “introduce a bit more structure to the year, increase team roster flexibility,…

Piano Man Makes Waves In Dragon Ball FighterZ Tournament

This is Greg. Greg plays Dragon Ball FighterZ, and he’s pretty damn good. Greg does this using a piano controller. And last night, at DreamHack Austin, he made it into the top 8 on loser’s side with his ivory keys of destruction. I first saw Greg through a Twitch clip simply entitled “Piano Man,” and…