Esports

Two Weekends In Boston Showed Two Very Different Scenes In Competitive Gaming

Last Sunday, as two top League of Legends teams battled in Boston’s TD Banknorth Garden in front of thousands of cheering fans, a stadium usher grumbled a complaint that a lot of first-time esports spectators mention. The pro players, whose facial expressions appeared in close-up on big screens all over the stadium, seemed way too…

Arms Will Get Customizable Controls In Next Patch

Arms’ guard button and other controls have been an issue for players, but that might turn around in a coming patch. Today, Nintendo tweetedthat in the upcoming Arms Version 3 patch, players will be able to remap their controls. This could mean guard is no longer on the left-stick click, or L3, which should make…

DreamHack Unbans CS:GO Players Who Cheated And Fixed Matches

Last July, esports organization ESL lifted the lifetime ban on tournament participation from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive players who had been caught cheating or participating in match-fixing schemes. The new sanctions now call for a two-year ban on cheaters and a five-year ban on match fixers, with the potential for longer bans in extreme cases. This…

Fighting Game Players Find The Best Combos For Jesus And Buddha

Fight of Gods is an independent fighting game currently in early access on Steam. Players pit deities like Buddha, Odin, and Jesus against each other on a virtual battlefield. The game’s tongue-in-cheek nature has quickly endeared it to the fighting game community, who are embracing the in-development title and learning what makes it tick. Fight…

North American League Team Overcomes Deficit And Water Spillage To Win Finals

A new record has been set for North American League of Legends. Team SoloMid has been a longstanding force in the North American League Championship Series, taking home many trophies, and now winning titles at an unprecedented rate. In a 3-1 victory over Immortals, TSM is the first team to win both the spring and…

League Pro Goes The Entire European Summer Final Without Dying A Single Time

Sometimes it’s enough just to not die. Survive, and the rest might follow. That was certainly the case for G2 Esports’ Jesper “Zven” Svenningsen at today’s European League of Legends Summer Final. In League, as in most sports, the plays that often get the most attention are the ones that do damage. We remember how…

Kid Solves Rubik’s Cube In Under Five Seconds, Sets New Record

15-year-old Patrick Ponce has set a new 3×3 Rubik’s Cube world record at 4.69 seconds.  The previous best was 4.73, held by Feliks Zemdeg, who set several records at this year’s World Championship Ponce’s other record placings include 11th in the world at 4x4x4 cubes and 10th at 5x5x5. At the Rally In The Valley…

Pro Doomfist Has Clutch Reaction To Tracer Ultimate

Some days you just can’t get rid of a bomb, but you can still try to give it back to the Tracer who threw it. In yesterday’s Overwatch Contenders match between EnVyUs and Kungarna, Michael “mykL” Padilla stuck Kim “Effect” Hyeon with Tracer’s Pulse Bomb, all but ensuring Kim’s imminent demise. Rather than share the…

Absolver‘s Trendiest Move Is Literally A Slap To The Face

As players have started populating the in-game world of Absolver and search for every move possible, one particular strike has proved both elusive and sought-after: a formless, direct, open-handed slap to the face. The Calbot is a simple move, one players have been referring to as “the slap.” In a game about technique and form,…

League of Legends is making runes free and removing the level cap this coming preseason. IP and blue essence will combine into the latter as a single currency earned across levels to purchase champions, chroma and more.

The Weekend In Esports: League Summer Finals And More

It’s Labor Day weekend, the unofficial end of summer, which means it’s also time for the League summer season to draw to a close. Immortals will be making the organization’s first-ever appearence in LCS finals where they will have the tough task of taking on veterans Team Solo Mid. It’ll be up to the newcomers…

Pro League Of Legends Team Says It’s Losing More Than $1.1 Million A Year

European esports organization H2K issued a letter yesterday to the League of Legends community, saying it will not continue to participate in the European League Championship Series unless Riot Games creates a better financial structure for teams. H2K, a team competing in today’s EU LCS playoffs, has been a part of the European region’s LCS since…

Don’t Get Your Hopes Up About Esports In The Olympics

On August 9, the co-president of the Paris Olympic bid committee announced that the 2024 Games would consider including esports as a medal event, saying: “There is some time to look at it, to interact, to engage. The IOC will have the last say, if they want esports on the program.” This week, International Olympic…

Recent Patches Are Bringing Rocket League Back To Basics

Rocket League has been steadily growing as a scene, both fostering its own league and spotlighting on networks like NBCSN. It’s easy to see why—rocket-car soccer is inherently simple to understand as a spectator. The high-flying automotive game has space for wild plays, but when it comes to competitive action, simple has proven better. Though…

Skullgirls Player Celebrates A ‘Happy Birthday’ In Appropriate Fashion

When fighting game players aren’t devising new ways to squeeze extra damage out of their combos or crafting deadly setups to trap opponents, they’re usually figuring out how to defeat fellow competitors in the most stylish ways possible. Skullgirls makes that a little easier thanks to a character named Big Band, who can utilize his…

Fans Prepare For The End Of Marvel Vs. Capcom 3

As soon as Marvel vs Capcom: Infinite comes out on September 19, every copy of Ultimate Marvel vs. Capcom 3 will evaporate into a fine mist, never to be played again—OK, not really, but you’d never know it from the approach taken by players’ farewells to the game. This week, UMvC3 player Amongst Shadows put…

Pokkén Tournament Match Reignites Debate Over Supposedly Boring Fighting Game Strategies

Winning by any means necessary is a core staple of fighting game competition, but it’s still unsettled whether fighting game pros need to entertain spectators while trying to do so. It’s been an issue in Street Fighter for decades, and top Super Smash Bros. players have even been booed for their controversial approaches to competition.…

Controller Mod Forces A Controversial Rematch During Smash Melee Major

On Sunday night, the Super Smash Brothers: Melee tournament at Shine 2017 forced a controversial rematch between William “Leffen” Hjelte and Daniel “ChuDat” Rodriguez, partway through the Top 8 finals. It all came down to a new rule about a Melee controller modification. Shine 2017 is the first Smash Bros major to require the use…

Melee Player Starts Trend Where Fans Raise Chairs Over Their Heads After Victories

Johnny “S2J” Kim started a chair-raising trend this past weekend at Shine 2017, a Super Smash Brothers major at the Seaport World Trade Center in Boston, MA. It all started during Saturday’s Melee pools and lasted through the rest of the weekend. On Saturday, S2J clawed his way up through the loser’s bracket, culminating in…

It’s Nice To See Daigo Win A Major Street Fighter Tournament Again

It’s been almost a year since Daigo “The Beast” Umehara has won a premier level SFV tournament. That changed earlier today when he took first place at the Hong Kong Esports Festival, a victory many in the fighting game world were glad (and possibly relieved) to see the aging star a achieve. Ever since the…