Esports

What Pros Think After A Week With Splatoon 2

Splatoon 2 has been in Switch owners’ hands for almost a full week, as squeaky-clean newcomers and grizzled ink veterans alike have been tearing through countless turf wars. While the battles rage on, we wanted to chat with some top-level players to get their assessment of the sequel: What’s the best tool for inking? What’s…

Street Fighter V Player Predicts Own Loss, Wins Anyway

Benoit “Gunfight” Arquilla, a French fighting game competitor living in Japan, proved the community’sage-old “never give up” adage still holds true in 2017 during a recent Street Fighter V live stream. After getting rocked by a strong Laura player named Suika during the final round of their online match, Gunfight was able to mount an…

Overwatch League Players Will Get Health Insurance, At Least $50K A Year

In an interesting turn of events, Blizzard has laid down hard line rules for how Overwatch League teams are expected to treat their players. In a new blog post, Blizzard outlined the stipulations, which franchise heads like New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and New York Mets COO Jeff Wilpon will have to follow. The…

Marvel vs. Capcom: Infinite will receive a day one patch that focuses on “making improvements” to unpopular character models for Chun-Li and “other Capcom characters,” the developer confirmed to Compete This should help folks focus on Infinite’s gameplay rather than whatever was going on with the first lady of Street Fighter’s face.

Call of Duty Commentator Raises Funds For Anti-Bullying Charity After Getting Kink Shamed

Call of Duty commentator Jack Campbell left his esports career behind last month in the wake of the internet’s response to leaked screencaps that implied he had a foot fetish. In his goodbye video, Campbell explained, “This has now affected my personal life, my family, and me personally… It’s too much for me now, and…

Melee Player’s Criminal History Divides Smash Bros. Community

In the Super Smash Bros. Melee community, how you play can matter far more than who you are. Recently, a top Melee player made his grand re-entry into the game’s competitive scene a little over a year after assaulting a Florida gas station clerk, causing a rift among fans and pros over whether it’s proficiency…

What Prevents Esports From Taking Off In Japan 

Esports is big business. Yet in Japan, home to many talented players, it has yet to reach the same money-making heights as elsewhere. The recently foundedJapan Esports League has big-time sponsors like Twitch and Mainichi News, one of Japan’s biggest newspapers. Japanese pro soccer team Verdy also has an esports team in the league, but…

ESL Lifts Lifetime Ban On Counter-Strike Match Fixers

Esports organization ESL announced on Monday a number of changes to its rules regarding cheating, doping, bribery, and most notably, match-fixing. In accordance with these changes, four former players from iBuyPower who were lifetime banned for fixing a match will be allowed to compete in ESL events After consultation with “a number of” Counter-Strike: Global…

‘Dicks Out 4 Winston’ And Other Signs At The Overwatch World Cup Qualifiers

If you’re headed to one of the Overwatch World Cup qualifiers and thinking of bringing that letter ‘D’ and a white picket fence scrawled on poster board, don’t. After all, Overwatch is a game built on around bizarre characters that encourage a sometimes frightening level of fandom. Nothing demonstrates that more clearly than taking a…

Counter-Strike Team Caps Off Dominant Run With First-Ever Majors Win

Nine of the ten players in today’s PGL Major finals had never made it to a Valve major finals before, with one team having never qualified for a major ever. Only Danylo “Zeus” Teslenko had competed in the finals of a major prior, and he’d been snubbed twice. In a tense match between the two…

When You Want Everyone To Know You Made That Overwatch Play Of The Game

Tanks, next to supports, are the often the unsung heroes of a match. So when you make one of the bigger plays of the game, even on the main stage of the Overwatch World Cup qualifiers, it’s fine to gloat a little. During the last night’s group stage matches in the Sydney qualifiers, Sweden took…

Pro Smash Bros. Melee Fox Player Is Merciless 

Nobody likes getting trapped in the corner. The Pokémon Stadium level had moved into its sheer rock wall phase when Justin “Plup” McGrath decided to knock off another one of David “R2DLiu” Liu’s lives without breaking a sweat. Nobody wants to meet one of the best Melee players around (Plup finished fifth at Evo) so…

So Here’s What Waka Flocka Thinks Of Dota 2

Rapper Waka Flocka Flame was in town for DreamHack Atlanta, performing a set at the tournament and video game convention. It so happens that Flocka is a fan of games, and so during a desk segment for a Dota 2 match between Team Secret and Planet Odd, he joined the panelists to give his thoughts…

Knife In Overtime Steals The Show At Counter-Strike Major

There’s flashy ways to win in overtime, but few as good as a leaping knife slash to ensure a bomb goes off. The PGL Major, playing out in Kraków, Poland this weekend, has had its fair share of both drama and compelling matches. In the quarterfinals between BIG and Immortals yesterday, the first game went…

The Weekend In Esports: DreamHack Atlanta, Counter-Strike Finals In Poland, And More

With Evo now in the rear-view mirror, the focus this weekend shifts to the Poland for a major Counter-Strike tournament and Atlanta for the latest DreamHack LAN. Below you’ll find where and when you can catch all the weekend’s biggest events in competitive gaming. Let us know what you’ll be watching in the comments or…

Game Developer Makes Soccer Game Without Learning How Soccer Is Played

Dan Marshall set out to make a game based off a single tweet, where he admitted to having very little knowledge of how soccer is played and, frankly, not caring to learn. The result of that exercise is Behold The Kickmen (on Steam for $4), an irreverent caricature of soccer that somehow makes the full loop…

Finland Out-Dances Russia, Great Britain At In The Groove World Cup

Markus “Hippaheikki” Kokkonen just secured a second first-place finish in this year’s In The Groove World Cup. The Finnish dance gamer is a well-known champion in Europe’s In The Groove scene, having placed first in the Doubles tournament at last year’s EuroCup. He scored first in yesterday’s Doubles tournament at the World Cup. There are…

Risking Scorn, Former Pro Is Trying To Make A Simpler Fighting Game

Fighting games are complicated. That’s just a simple truth. As the genre has developed over the last few decades, franchises have become inundated with mechanics that both alienate newcomers and drive divisions between players. The makers of the upcoming game Fantasy Strike are trying to change that. Developed by Sirlin Games, a studio founded by…

League of Legends‘ World Champions Suddenly Can’t Stop Losing

After this week’s League Champions Korea matches, the reigning world champions of SKT T1 have gone 0-8 in the last two weeks. It’s an unprecedented slide for a team that has been the de facto best in the world. SKT T1 is a three-time world champion, whose roster includes not just the god of mid…

Valve Closes Annual Dota 2 Merch Shop Amid Community Backlash

WeLoveFine, a nerd-goods merch company, won’t play host to this year’s Dota 2 International Secret Shop, Valve announced last night The Secret Shop, Valve’s seasonal memorabilia shop that opens once a year for The International, has been run through WeLoveFine for the last couple Internationals. For the Dota 2 community, this has been a point…