Esports

Dota 2 heroes, as told by Spongebob Squarepants clips. The wait for the Dueling Fates update drags on, but at least we have this to get us through the long, patchless days.

The Weekend In Esports: Hearthstone Summer Championship And Rocket League Regional Playoffs 

Welcome back! While the Worlds 2017 Group Stage finishes up overnight, the top players in Hearthstone will be grinding their way through the HTC Summer Championship in California. Russian wunderkind Pavel Beltukov is already in the quarterfinals, and will be looking for revenge after a dismal showing in the Winter Championship. Also look out for…

Team SoloMid Comes Up Short At League Worlds 2017

Only one hope left for North American League of Legends fans. After being given the “group of life” for the League of Legends World Championships, Team SoloMid was knocked out of group D in a tiebreaker last night. To rub a little salt in the wound, it was European team Misfits that took the win…

Valve Responds To Debate Over Third-Party Dota 2 Tournament Streams

As the 2018 Dota 2 season kicks off, controversy had already begun to swirl around streamers who broadcast or commentate matches from tournaments they aren’t running. While Valve has responded to the issue, the answers ended up being more vague than some had hoped. In a blog post last night titled “Broadcasting Dota 2,” Valve…

Abandoned Television Earns Smash Competition A Bomb Squad Visit

It’s an unfortunate truth of our imperfect world that security concerns arise whenever a significant group of people gather in a centralized area. Competitive gaming tournaments are no different, but a uniquely Super Smash Bros. situation arose at a major event last weekend thanks to a piece of dated hardware that continues to be necessary…

Smash Bros. Tournament Organizer Partially Pins Unusually Broad Controller Ban On Nintendo

A venue-wide ban on a modernized Super Smash Bros. controller at a major tournament last weekend has re-heated the debate about what kind of controllers should be used in Super Smash Bros. Melee tournaments. At The Big House 7, which featured everything from Super Smash Bros. 64 to Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, controllers…

Almost Everyone Is Playing Overwatch With A Mercy On Their Team Now

Overwatch’s angelic healer Mercy got a massive makeover this month. The changes have turned her into the most popular hero across all levels of competitive play, according to data from hundreds of thousands of Overwatch player profiles collected by the fan-run site Omnic Meta. The stats show that Mercy currently gets selected almost 100% of…

Overwatch’s Most Popular Player Talks Overwatch League (And Bastion)

Brandon “Seagull” Larned has had quite a year, going from esports player to full-time streamer and back again, all while continuing to grow a fandom of millions who love him for his easygoing demeanor and gravity-defying Pharah and Genji plays. Over the weekend, his new team, EnvyUs, swept the finals of the $100,000 Overwatch Contenders…

Esports Team Jerseys Keep Getting More Athletic

In the early 2000s, pro gamers had much simpler uniforms. They wore cotton hoodies and T-shirts while competing for prize pools that were in the tens of thousands of dollars, rather than the hundreds of thousands. You can see how much has changed from looking at esports jerseys. SK Gaming, founded in 1997, is still…

World’s Best Smash 4 Player Lost Twice This Weekend To Upstart Players

Two unsigned, ambitious competitors shook up the competitive Super Smash Bros. 4 community last night after shutting down the game’s best player, Gonzalo “Zero” Barrios, in two fun-to-watch upsets. At the Big House 7, Smash 4’s biggest tournament in the midwest, Zero Suit Samus player Tyler “Marss” Martins and Corrin player Brian “Cosmos” Kalu each…

Overwatch Team Finishes First Season Back In North America Undefeated

Team Envyus managed to go the entire six weeks of Overwatch Contender’s first regular season undefeated, and proved it wasn’t a fluke during today’s Grand Finals at Blizzards new esports arena. First they swept FNRGFE in a best-of-five semifinals where the latter looked good but not good enough. Despite taking a point off the soon-to-be…

Rogue Lets Go Of Overwatch Roster After Failing To Secure Spot In League

Esports organization Rogue has announced that it will part ways with its current Overwatch roster after not being named one of the inaugural teams in the Overwatch League. Rogue posted a statement on Twitlonger this morning, describing the situation: Today we’re sorry to announce that we will be breaking up the current #RogueOW roster to…

Corrin player Cosmos sends one of Super Smash Bros. For Wii U’s best, ZeRo, to the loser’s bracket with a 3-0. Top 32 matches at The Big House 7 started early this morning but didn’t let up on the upsets. You can catch the full match through the video here

Nintendo World Champ Crowned After Beating Mario Odyssey Level Nobody Had Played Before

The Nintendo World Championships closed out in a finale reminescent of The Wizard. The two finalists, John Numbers and Thomas G., raced across three levels of the upcoming Super Mario Odyssey, working to beat unseen levels of the upcoming Nintendo Switch game. Thomas G. surged up through the “underground,” the loser’s bracket, after overcoming opponents…

Street Fighter Pro’s Secret Weapon: A Tape Measure

Competing at the highest level isn’t just about talent, but consistency. Hajime Taniguchi, or “Tokido,” exemplified this virtue by busting out a tape measure to ensure he was sitting the proper distance from the monitor at this morning’s TWFighter Major in Taiwan. As his opponent was getting settled, Tokido busted out an actual tape measure…

Sick Galio Drop Secures Win For Chinese League Team At Worlds

Worlds 2017 is underway, and home crowd Chinese team Royal Never Give Up handed Korea’s Samsung Galaxy its first loss of the group stage with a powerful one-two punch. The match between Samsung Galaxy and RNG was a one-sided affair for the latter. Galaxy was sitting on a massive gold deficit and hadn’t tallied up…

The Weekend In Esports: Worlds Group Stage And Overwatch Play-Offs

The Worlds 2017 group stage continues this weekend, alongside the season play-offs for Overwatch Contenders and a ton of Counter-Strike matches. In League of Legends, this morning saw North American hopefuls Team Solo Mid rip through Team WE followed by China’s Royal Never Give Up earning an important victory over South Korea’s Samsung Galaxy. But…

Sorry, Marvel vs. Capcom Pros, But SonicFox Wants To Dominate Your Game Too

In the modern era of fighting game competition, few players are as accomplished as Dominique “SonicFox” McLean. Despite his young age, the 19-year-old competitor has three Evolution Championship Series victories under his belt andalmost half a million dollars in total tournament winnings. And now, he’s looking to translate his oppressive style to one of the…

The first official Fight of Gods tournament will award each of its top three finalists with a crown of thorns. The blasphemous Steam release pits deities like Odin, Amaterasu, and Jesus Christ against one another in immortal combat, and the developers are certainly leaning into its playfully sacrilegious themes with these unique trophies. Fight of…

Everything You Didn’t Know About Drifting In Mario Kart 8 Deluxe

Every single time you do a drift in Mario Kart, you charge up a speed boost that unleashes when you exit the drift. But there’s a lot more happening under the hood when it comes to this speed boost: how fast it charges, how long it lasts, and whether or not it’s actually going to…