Esports

Vitality’s Young Bucks Are Starting Hot In European League of Legends

Team Vitality came into the 2018 season with four players lifted wholesale from another roster. Despite a promising performance in the challenger series, these four ex-Giants were going to be playing on the big stage under a new banner. In the last two weeks, they’ve proven they can more than handle the spotlight. The rookies…

Finally, Upsets Are Happening In Overwatch League

For its first two weeks, Overwatch League settled into a predictable rhythm: top-tier teams Seoul Dynasty, New York Excelsior, and London Spitfire sat perched atop their perfect records while everybody else squabbled for scraps beneath the table. At the end of last week, those three teams were at a combined 12-0. This week, that tide…

Fifth Maps In Pro Overwatch Are Good As Hell

Overwatch League matches are played across four maps, and usually, the result is a win or loss in those four maps. More often than not it’s a 4-0 sweep, or a decisive 3-1. You can even tie on certain maps, leading to score lines like week 1’s Dallas v. Seoul game that ended 2-1. But…

Fan Of Overwatch League’s Worst Team Buys $100 Of Skins After Losing Bet

Overwatch League’s first season is only a few weeks old, but already, a pecking order has begun to form. At the top, there’s Seoul Dynasty, the dynamite Korean roster that hasn’t lost a single match. Way down at the bottom, meanwhile, are the Shanghai Dragons, who have been grinding their wrists and keyboards into powder…

Valve Makes ‘Exclusive’ Streaming Deals Like Facebook’s Incredibly Confusing [UPDATE]

An exclusive broadcasting deal between ESL, one of the largest esports organizations in the world, and Facebook, a malignant social media tumor too insinuated into daily life to safely remove, has shown the shortcomings of gaming company Valve’s hands-off approach after the first major Dota 2 tournament subject to the deal become a spectating nightmare.…

A Haywire Street Fighter V Character Could Run Amok At Evo Japan

Street Fighter V: Arcade Edition players recently discovered a serious bug that makes one of the game’s most powerful characters almost unstoppable, which could have serious consequences with the inaugural Evo Japan on the horizon. The bug’s simplicity belies its severity. By combining his V-Skill armor, which gives him the ability to shrug off one…

Overwatch Pro Flips Bird When He Thought No One Was Watching

Last night, London Spitfire DPS player Joon-yeong “Profit” Park shot a middle finger at the camera right after he got brought out as a substitution in the team’s second game against SF Shock. But Profit didn’t think anybody would see it. Update: Profit has issued a fantastic apology. Enjoy it below. Stylosa, who serves as…

How SoulCalibur‘s Nightmare Has Changed Over Two Decades

SoulCalibur VI’s second trailer dropped today, offering players a glimpse at the 20-year-old fighting game’s upcoming roster. One constant throughout SoulCalibur’s shifting cast of fighters is the cursed villain Nightmare, whose new design was revealed today. Nightmare is the antagonist of the series and the living avatar of the evil sword Soul Edge. When I…

Overwatch League Commissioner Just Hasn’t ‘Gotten Around’ To Posting Code Of Conduct

Overwatch League has a code of conduct, but no, you can’t see it, at least not until league commissioner Nate Nanzer gets around to putting it online, which he still hasn’t done two weeks into the league’s inaugural season. “We just haven’t gotten around to it,” Nanzer told the Telegraph. “I don’t know the exact…

Racist Jokes Keep Showing Up In Overwatch League Broadcasts

On the opening night of Overwatch League, a Dallas Fuel fan at the Blizzard Arena hoisted a sign with the alt-right meme frog Pepe on it, and had it confiscated by event staff before the night was over. But that was only the first meme with racist associations to worm its way adjacent to Blizzard’s…

Have You Heard The Good News About Facebook

Facebook has just announced a plot to murder Twitch in cold blood with their new exclusive streaming deal with ESL, the world’s biggest esports event company. But will that really be enough to strangle Twitch, the video game streaming service now owned by omnipotent internet god, Amazon? Here come the bloodthirsty headlines: But wait! This…

In South Korea, Rock Star Becomes A Battlegrounds Pro 

Jung Joon Young isn’t only a regular on South Korean TV, but he’s also the lead singer of the rock group Drug Restaurant. He’s just added a new gig to his large resume: Esports pro. As tipster Sang points out, Jung has signed to Kongdoo Company, which was founded by retired StarCraft legend Hong “YellOw”…

The Stopwatch Has Slowed Pro League of Legends To A Crawl

This past weekend was the season opener for the North American League of Legends Championship Series. It was the first games for a newly franchised LCS and also the first on the newest patch of the game, and one thing dominated: a whole lot of stopwatches. The stopwatch was added last November, but opening weekend…

Which One Was The Confetti Button Again?

Looks like the Hawaiian emergency alert operator found a new job at Blizzard. During a tense grand finals between Frank “Fr0zen” Zhang and Chen “tom60229″ Wi Lin at the Hearthstone World Championships today, someone seemed to bump the winner’s confetti button. Chen would go on to win in a reverse sweep against Zhang’s Jade Druid…

Congratulations to Chen “tom60229″ Wei Lin, winner of the 2017 Hearthstone World Championships. Chen won in a reverse sweep against Fr0zen, and takes home $250,000 USD in prize money.

Evil Geniuses Fall In A Sweep At Former Dota 2 Major

This weekend was another shot for the new look of Evil Geniuses to prove itself. While the team’s run up to the grand finals seemed steady, a devastating three-and-done series showed the lineup hasn’t found its footing yet. Since the shuffle that brought on Rasmus “Misery” Filipsen as the new captain and cut long-time offlaner…

Splatoon Player Clinches Win With The Most Satisfying Dunk

Most players might just use Splatoon 2‘s high-flying super jump to get back into the action after you’ve respawned. Saffron Rice’s DNerd found a different use: to sink the game-winning clam. During yesterday’s Splatoon 2 tournament at Genesis 5, Saffron was down in a game of Clam Blitz that had gone into overtime. Their opponents,…

Doublelift Gets Revenge In North American League Opener

A long-time veteran of the North American League of Legends scene, Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng wrote at the start of this year that one of his goals was to beat his former teammates on Team SoloMid. He didn’t have to wait long. The 2018 North American League Championship Series started with a hyped-up grudge match between…

The Competitive Smash 4 Scene Is Anxiously Awaiting Nintendo’s Next Big Move

The last few years have been pivotal in establishing Super Smash Bros. For Wii U as its own game, separate from its everlasting older sibling Melee. The Smash 4 scene has grown, developed major personalities and storylines, and saw its Evo grand finals live on cable television. Now all eyes are on Nintendo for what’s…

Dissidia Final Fantasy‘s First Major Tournament Shows Its Potential And Pitfalls

After hosting sporadic tournaments over the last few months, game developer Square Enix hosted a special Dissidia Final Fantasy NT invitational at Wednesday Night Fights in Santa Ana, California. The players—an eclectic bunch comprised of traditional fighting game competitors, longtime Dissidia fans, and online personalities—put on quite a show, even if there’s still room for…