Esports

Overwatch Pro Leaves Wedding Reception, Wins Big Match, Goes Back To Reception

Over the weekend, Overwatch pro Joonas “Zappis” Alakurtti had a decision to make: attend a friend’s wedding, or play his first match in Blizzard’s $100,000 Overwatch Contenders tournament. He chose both. Alakurtti is a member of Finnish organization Team Gigantti, a team with a solid backbone (its members previously played Overwatch for major org Ninjas…

Gwent Gets An $850,000 Tournament Series

Gwent, the in-universe card game from The Witcher 3, has been in beta as a standalone game since last May. Today, developers CD Projekt RED announced a new season-based competitive mode called Gwent Masters. Separate from the ranked mode already available to Gwent players, Gwent Masters will allow players to compete in online tournaments that…

Pro Overwatch Had A Weekend Of Upsets

The first “real” season of Overwatch’s official minor league, Contenders, kicked off over the weekend, and it was characterized by underdog teams repeatedly flipping the script. It began on the UK side of things, with top-ranked European team eUnited losing 1-3 against the recently-founded Team Gigantti. Gigantti, a team made up of former members of…

Turns Out Madden‘s Referees Make Human Errors Too

Even the AI refs in Madden need glasses. Over the weekend, at the FIFA Interactive World Cup, a questionable offsides started to make me wonder: What if the refs in video games are programmed to, on occasion, get it wrong? In Madden, for example, there’s a “challenge” system that mirrors NFL football. If you think…

EA just announced sign-ups for the closed alpha of Battlefield 1 Incursions, a new 5v5 competitive mode that allows only one vehicle per team. The alpha, which debuts for selected players in September, will feature a scaled-down version of Battlefield 1‘s Giant’s Shadow map. Sign-ups end August 26 at 11:59 pm PDT.

NFL Signs On To Co-Organize, Overhaul Madden 18 Championships

Today, Electronic Arts and the NFL announced the launch of the Madden NFL Club Championship, an esports event that involves all 32 of the NFL’s teams. The competition, which will be part of this year’s Madden NFL Championship Series, starts on August 22, which is the game’s preorder release day. Starting today, would-be competitors can…

Overwatch Pros Melt Before The Zarya-Doomfist Double-Ult

The Zarya-Doomfist combination, sometimes referred to as a “gravfist,” is a simple but effective one-two punch. It’s brutal in public games, but seeing it land in a professional Overwatch match is spectacular. Zarya starts it off with her Graviton Surge, which launches a gravity bomb, sucking opponents into one confined area. Then Doomfist launches into…

Druids Are Dominating Hearthstone‘s Newest Expansion

It’s been a week and a half since the new Knights of the Frozen Throne expansion dropped for Hearthstone. With each new set, there’s always a few growing pains and adjustments, but even in a short amount of time, one thing has become clear: Hearthstone, as it stands right now, is all about the Druids.…

League Pro Steals Show With Massive Triple Kill

Yesterday’s North American League Championship Series ended in an upset for Cloud9, but marksman player Zachary “Sneaky” Scuderi can’t feel too bad. His plays on Tristana during the final game of the series were easily the highlight of that day’s games. In a fight at Baron Nashor, the giant purple beast that rewards an empowering…

Players Have Learned To Fear Raichu At This Year’s Pokémon Championships 

Day one of the Pokémon World Championships was a bloodbath where more than 100 of the world’s best players duked it out for a chance to compete with the season’s best competitors in the second phase of the tournament. And even though the Video Game Championship series is solo affair, one tightknit group of players…

We Respect This Splatoon 2 Player’s Dedication To Inking Their Spawn

We have often espoused the virtues of inking your spawn in Splatoon 2‘s Turf War mode, but rarely do you see dedication like player “Giokiller” exhibited in one match. Clipped by Twitch streamer HeyItsBigfoot during a regular match, Giokiller seemed hellbent on not just generally inking the spawn, but covering every square inch. It’s a…

Riot Creates League of Legends Platformer Based On Community Suggestions

As part of their annual “hackathon,” several Riot Games employees created a 2D platformer based on community suggestions. The game, called Ziggs Arcade Blast, is now available to play. Made in 48 hours, the game (downloadable here) features the bomb-lobbing Ziggs journeying through an arcade-style world to eventually fight Brand, another League of Legends champion.…

The Weekend In Esports: Overwatch Contenders Starts For Real

It’s a quieter weekend in the world of pro gaming compared to earlier in the month, but there’s still plenty going on, especially if you’re an Overwatch fan. While lots of money changes hands as the ground work gets laid for Blizzard’s premier Overwatch League, the game’s lower tiers continue to grow into their own…

England Wins FIFA Interactive World Cup For First Time In 12 Years

Over the course of this week’s FIFA Interactive World Cup, Spencer “Gorilla” Ealing scored 46 goals across three days on his way to the grand final. In a 7-3 aggregate, Ealing not only took home $200,000 in prizes, but the first FIWC win for England since 2005. The lead up to the final FIFA 17…

Overwatch‘s Best Korean Team Loses To Underdogs’ Daring Doomfist Gambit

So far, there have been three Overwatch APEX tournaments in South Korea. Lunatic Hai has won two of them. Widely regarded as one of the best Overwatch teams in the world—if not the best—they were expected to dismantle relatively unheralded team MVP Space without breaking much of a sweat. Instead, they lost. Lunatic Hai started…

After Cancer Diagnosis, Dota 2 Commentator Returns To The Game Between Chemo Sessions

Jorien “Sheever” van der Heijden is lively when we sit down to chat. A five-time veteran of The International, this event isn’t quite the same as the previous ones. In May, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Sitting on the concourse floor in Key Arena in August, several weeks into the Dota 2 tournament that…

What We Like And Love About StarCraft: Remastered

StarCraft came out 20 years ago and became one of the most popular and prominent esports ever made. Maddy Myers and Eric Van Allen of Compete were children when the game came out, but they grew up surrounded by StarCraft’s legacy. Now that Blizzard has released a remastered version of this classic game as well…

Quake Champions will enter early access on Aug. 22 with new maps, features, and the DOOM Slayer as a new champion. Also available is a champions pack, which will unlock all champions now and forever for $29.99.

For Honor’s Season three patch seems to have patched out the exploit that fueled one player’s victory (with a $2,000 prize) in a recent official tournament [Correction—8/16/17]: Ubisoft has confirmed that the prize was not $10,000, as originally reported, but $2,000. We regret the error.

Nine Tips For Women (And Anyone Else) Attending Their First Fighting Game Tournament

Are you are a woman who wants to compete in a fighting game event, but you don’t know where to start? Maybe you’re worried you don’t know enough or aren’t good enough. (Probably not true.) Or maybe you just want to know what these events are like ahead of time. Which ones should you try…