Esports

Genji has just joined the Heroes of the Storm roster, so let’s hope you wanted yet another Assassin type. With the addition of Genji comes the game’s first Overwatch-themed map, Hanamura. This is a two-lane payload map with a whole lot of beautiful cherry blossoms.

Wild Melee Match Decided By 1/60 Of A Second

Two giants of Melee met in the loser’s finals at today’s CEO Dreamland, and the match came down to the wire. Jason “Mew2King” Zimmerman and Juan “Hungrybox” Debiedma were tied at 2-2, each with only a single life left, vying for a spot in the grand finals when a single frame decided the outcome. Zimmerman,…

Car Crash Pile-Up Knocks Forza Racer Out Of Invitational

This weekend’s Forza Motosport 6 Invitational has showcased a solid amount of sim racing, but one pile-up led to a well-known racer missing the grand finals. Competitive Forza, at least in this tournament, enforces penalties for racers who get a little too close. After a few bumps and bruises during a semifinal race, the commentators…

Duck Hunt Dogs Are Having Their Day At Smash Tournament

The snarky pup from Duck Hunt isn’t the most common competitor in Smash 4. Though he has his defenders, players like Raito have had to work to show that the dog’s D-tier ranking doesn’t prevent him from taking games off the best of the best. At CEO Dreamland, Raito and other Duck Hunt Dog players…

Random Car Steals The Kill In Overwatch Tournament

Oasis’ active traffic, even in the face of an ongoing superhuman turf war, has led to some fantastic vehicular highlights. In a match between Detonator Gold and Hong Kong Attitude in the ongoing Overwatch Pacific Championship, pro player ManGoJai learned the hard way that you shouldn’t jaywalk. With DTN’s SamuraiD bearing down on him, ManGoJai…

The Weekend In Esports: Bow Down Before Whispy Woods

Pros from the far reaches of the less traditional fighting game community descend on Orlando, Florida this weekend to make sacrifices to that tree dude from Kirby. CEO Dreamland is the first event of its kind dedicated to brawl-style fighters and will give top talent across games like Melee and Smash 4 (Wii U) a…

New League Patch Offers Tank Players Some Freedom

With the last few playoff games for the spring split closing out in the coming weeks, the League of Legends season has almost reached its midpoint. Traditionally a time when competitive play takes a break and sweeping design changes can be made that radically shift approaches to the game, Riot has announced the first batch…

Overwatch‘s Most Popular Player Steps Back From Competing So He Can Stream More

For quite a while, Brandon “Seagull” Larned has led a dual life. Sometimes, he’s a pro player for NRG Esports. Other times, he’s the most popular Overwatch streamer in the business. One guy with two time-devouring careers. Something had to give. Today Larned, who’s known for his dazzling Genji plays, announced that he’s stepping down…

How Not To Cheat At League of Legends

Just as the history of conventional sports is essentially a history of cheating, the same is true of gaming. In the modern day, though, with billions of dollars involved in competitive gaming, cheating is shadier, more consequential, and involves rewards far greater than the free lives offered up by the infamous Contra code. In the…

The Best Taunt In Fighting Games Involves Tricky Musical Combos

Of all the ways players taunt each other in fighting games, there’s no taunt as stylish as the trumpet solos that players can pull off in Skullgirls Players can perform as police-officer-turned-brass-instrument “Big Band” and have used him to play an impressive array of songs, from James Bond’s theme to “Song of Storms” from The…

13-Year-Old Prodigy Wins Pinball World Championships

This past weekend, the Professional & Amateur Pinball Association (or PAPA) hosted the world championships of pinball, bringing flipperheads together under one roof to compete on classic machines for the top score and prize. It was a fantastic display of pinball wizardry, marred only by an incomprehensible production set-up. Twelve different machines stood as the…

Fnatic Upset Top European Team In League Playoffs

This weekend marked the kickoff of the League Championship Series’ spring split playoffs, and in the European region, top team H2K finally met its match against a revitalized Fnatic. H2K was a clear favorite in today’s match, with a 10-3 record for the season compared to Fnatic’s 6-7. Having beat Fnatic 2-0 in regular play,…

Bizarre Modes Lead To Insane Rocket League Goals

We’re halfway through season three of the Rocket League Championship Series, and to celebrate, several teams are participating in an invitational today where the maps and settings were determined by viewers. Opening the action were Atelier and Denial Esports, who would soon be plunged into the sound and fury of community-nominated novelty game modes. Game…

The Weekend In Esports: Tecmo Super Bowl Returns

Tecmo Super Bowl is back! Re-live the glory of the most beloved sports game of all time by watching its top players face-off this weekend in the game’s annual Madison Bowl. 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…

RunAway Blows 3-1 Lead In Overwatch Apex Finals

OGN, a Korean esports organization, hosted the grand finals for Overwatch Apex Season 2, and it was a barn-burner. RunAway, a Cinderella story team with no organization, met the titanic Lunatic-Hai, a team whose only loss in the group stage was to RunAway. A mixture of revenge and underdogs, and a grand finals that went…

King of Fighters XIV Puts New Spin On Countering Fighting Game Fireballs

The fireball is perhaps the most iconic move in fighting games. Along with the uppercut, it forms the basis of the genre’s most foundational strategies. As such, fighting games have evolved so that one or two characters in any given release usually have interesting ways to counter them. The PlayStation 4 game King of Fighters…

Dota Match Turns Into Five-Hour Melodrama

At about 11:00 p.m. local time a day ago, in the European West servers of Dota 2, 10 players queued up for an average, unranked match. Over the course of five hours, these players would rage, taunt, abandon, create new accounts, and become good friends. It was an odyssey of Dota matchmaking, a play in…

How Much Do Pro Gamers Sweat?

“Blood, sweat and tears” appears on many a weight room motivational poster, but isn’t quite as applicable to esports as it is to more traditional sports. There arecertainly tears, after wins and losses, and injuries are becoming commonplace as pros get older. Curious, we reached out to esports competitors in all sorts of games to…

Fighting Game Community Falls In Love With Street Fighter Veteran’s New Look

Ryan “Gootecks” Gutierrez lost every single one of his Street Fighter V matches during Eleague’s invitational last week. But, somehow, he emerged from that seven-string loss looking cool as heck. A full week later, Street Fighter fans still can’t stop talking about his sunglasses. The former Street Fighter veteran turned YouTube star has not been…

University Of Utah To Offer Varsity League Scholarship

The University of Utah has announced a varsity esports program, starting with League of Legends. Part of the Pac-12 Conference, Utah is the first Power Five school to sponsor this type of program, and it doesn’t plan on stopping at one game. The team, sponsored by the EAE video game development program, hopes to expand…