Esports

Meet The Woman Raising Japan’s Next Generation Of Street Fighter Champions

When I called Street Fighter pro Yuko “Chocoblanka” Momochi at 11 a.m. Japan time, her husband, the legendary Street Fighter champion Yusuke Momochi, was asleep. The husband-wife team, both Street Fighter players, had recently launched a school to train promising Japanese competitors. They’ve rented out a studio to use as a DIY classroom. They’re running…

Dota 2 Shoutcaster Calls Out Camera Operator For Missing The Big Fight 

When the last big teamfight of a Dota 2 match could decide the outcome entirely, it’s usually helpful to actually see the fight play out on stream. In last night’s group stage match between Team Liquid and Vici Gaming J, at the StarLadder i-League StarSeries Season 3 finals, the camera operator (often referred to as…

Binding of Isaac Racing Is Back From the Dead

Back in 2013, Binding of Isaac fans turned the single-player game into a competitive pastime where multiple players raced against each other, live. Races involve two players facing off simultaneously, side-by-side, with each running through the game as fast as they can. That scene faded for a while, but now it’s making a big comeback…

Street Fighter V Stream Loses Audio, Gets Saved By Commentator’s Own Sound Effects

Some competitive gaming events would fall apart if the audio from the game the competitors were playing suddenly cut out. Not last night. During a losers bracket matchup between Arturo “Sabin” Sanchez and local competitor Bryant “Smug” Huggins at the Next Level Battle Circuit in New York City, the audio for Street Fighter V abruptly…

The Next Dota Major Is Already Running Into Issues

The Kiev Major, the second and final major of the Dota 2 season before the next International (Dota 2’s world cup), is facing a raft of problems. Travel issues, ticket scalpers, and changing dates are dredging up ghosts of majors past. In December, it was announced that the Kiev Major would take place from April…

Welcome To Compete

Welcome to Compete, a joint venture between Deadspin and Kotaku dedicated to covering the best, worst, dumbest, most thrilling, most interesting, and, generally, the most stupefying—in the better and worse senses of the word—in esports and competitive gaming. We’re just getting started here, but hope to make this a destination for the kind of coverage…

Surprisingly, Pokémon‘s Sandcastle Monster Has Become A Thing In Competitive Play

At the start of 2017, nobody really considered Palossand, Pokémon’s sandcastle monster, to be noteworthy for competitive play. Then, the top-four World Championship finisher Markus Stadter lost against a Palossand-centric team live on a Twitch stream. After that, Stadter decided try the Palossand gimmick using Pokemon Sun & Moon’s new QR “rental” feature, which allows…

Hearthstone Arena Going To Standard Will Make Drafts Less Awful

Blizzard announced significant changes to Arena mode for its upcoming “Year of the Mammoth” patch, so hopefully players won’t draft so many 0-3 runs. When the patch goes live “near the end of February,” Arena will switch from a wild format to standard, limiting the cards available to those recently released, the same limited card…

League of Legends Fan Channel Hit with Shady DMCA Takedowns

Riot Games has the right to issue Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notices for any League of Legends footage that appears without their permission online. But thus far, Riot’s been relatively hesitant to do so. This week, one YouTuber in particular has seen some League of Legends videos go up on the chopping block, and…

Overwatch Hacker Impersonating Streamer Gets Matched Up Against Real Player, Rivalry Ensues

Kephrii is a competitive Overwatch player known for being one of the best Widowmakers in the world. Last weekend, he hopped into a match where he found another Widowmaker player also using the handle Kephrii—and that player happened to be a hacker. The fake Kephrii didn’t just have the gall to impersonate a top player…

Smash 4‘s new tournament ruleset removed Duck Hunt’s stage from the legal stage list ahead of EVO 2017. A heated debate between pro Smash players led up to today’s decision. EVO organizer Bassem “Bear” Dahdouh told me, “Essentially there were matches where people would sit on top of the tree platforms for long periods of…

Controversial Guilty Gear Mechanic Leads to Devastatingly Quick Loss

A contentious Guilty Gear Xrd mechanic known as Danger Time reared its ugly head at publisher Aksys Games’ Anime Ascension tournament this past weekend, leading to a noteworthy annihilation in the game’s finals bracket. Competitive fighting game players don’t always jive with the mechanics in their favorite titles. That’s part of the reason Super Smash…

Pro Overwatch Player Wrecks Entire Team’s Defense With Sneaky Lucio Boop

In the $100k Tespa Collegiate Champion Finals, Overwatch player Funanah used Lucio’s “Boop” to steal an early lead in a match. It was a play so good that it seemed to demoralize his opponents into losing the whole thing. The Boop, as many of you already know, is Lucio’s Soundwave move—it can push people to…

One Rough Year Later, Daigo Plans To Stick With Ryu in Street Fighter V

For 20 years, Daigo “The Beast” Umehara has been considered a Street Fighter legend. Defeating champions from around the world, Umehara emerged as one of the greatest fighting game players of all time, defending his top standing for most of Street Fighter IV’s lifespan. But since the early 2016 release of Street Fighter V, Umehara…

Overwatch Mom Is Really Stoked For Her Son’s Team

It’s not easy being a competitive gamer or a college student at an elite university, and especially not both. Fortunately, Overwatch player SlurpeeThief has the support of both his teammates and an extremely enthusiastic mom to pull from. At the Tespa Collegiate Series finals for Overwatch last night in California, Berkeley put the kibosh on…

Xbox Beats PlayStation Again In Regional FIFA Championships

Rafael “Rafifa13″ Fortes took home the title in this weekend’s Miami Regionals in FIFA Ultimate Team, beating LucasRep98 3-1 and earning a spot in Berlin for the Championship Finals. The Regional finals, broadcast on ESPN2, showcased the two platform winners playing against each other. Fortes, who hailed from the Xbox division, continued his platform’s reign…

Counter-Strike Pro Promises To “Crush” Opponent, Backs It Up In Dominating Fashion

When Astralis bested Virtus.Pro in the grand finals of the ELEAGUE Major in January, Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye tweeted that his team “underperformed” in its 2-1 victory. A member of Virtus.Pro took offense, and promised to crush Astralis when they next met. That meeting happened today, in the semifinals of DreamHack Masters Las Vegas 2017. Over…

FIFA Pro Puts Away Two Goals In Under A Minute At Miami Regionals

In this weekend’s FIFA ‘17 Ultimate Team Regionals, one player put up a quick double that reminded me of my casual matches against friends. Rafael “Rafifa13″ Fortes, using a combo of Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi, took an early lead in this match with two goals against his opponent, Javier “Janoz CFI” Muñoz. FIFA Ultimate…

Just Dance‘s Best Player Is A 16-Year-Old Kid From Turkey

Just Dance has a new World Cup champion, and it’s not who anyone thought it would be. Somehow breezing past stiff competition from around the globe, high school-aged Umutcan managed the biggest upset in the game’s short competitive history. I know what you’re thinking: there’s a World Cup for Just Dance? Yes, there is. That…

Some Hearthstone Players Challenge Themselves To Spot Lethal Combos

Hearthstone players have been playing “spot the lethal” for years. Similar to chess puzzles, where a board state is laid out and you try to achieve checkmate in a certain number of moves, “spot the lethal” asks if you can figure out how to drop your opponent’s life to 0 in a single turn. YouTube…