Esports

Overwatch League Teams Share Plans And Concerns About Moving To Their Home Cities In 2020

After two seasons of living and playing in and around Burbank, California, Overwatch League teams will finally be moving to their respective cities next year. Players and coaches have told Kotaku that they’ve been grappling with planning for these moves for a while, particularly with respect to players’ already grueling practice schedules. Overwatch League commissioner…

Top Players Look To Drink, Chill, Maybe Win Some Cash At This Weekend’s Smash Ultimate Summit

The first ever Smash Ultimate Summit is here. After years of success in bringing its collective weirdness to Super Smash Bros. Melee, Beyond the Summit is finally launching its hybrid esports tournament format, complete with casual couch banter and comedy sketches, for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate Invited players include the likes of MkLeo, ZeRo, Mew2King,…

Some Of Overwatch League’s Best 2018 Teams Are Getting Trounced In 2019

When the first season of Overwatch League came to a close, there was a compelling argument to be made that Los Angeles Valiant could have made the finals and even won the whole dang season if things had just gone a little more their way in key matches. This season, they’ve yet to win a…

The World’s Top StarCraft II Players Will Battle This Weekend

It’s not every day there’s a big StarCraft II tournament going on, and this weekend’s could offer a rematch of one of last year’s great showdowns. The Intel Extreme Masters Season XIII StarCraft II started this week with 24 teams and will soon be down to 12 as the playoff stage gets underway this weekend.…

How A Joke About An Overwatch League Pro Driving A Bus Spiraled Out Of Control

Esports professionals get to play video games for a living, but a job’s a job. Many players pour countless grueling hours into practice and preparation, not to mention actual matches and events. That’s why fans did a collective double take when, during season one of Overwatch League, rumors began to circulate that a Florida Mayhem…

The Overwatch League’s Shanghai Dragons finally got their first victory tonight after a winless first season: an impressive 3-1 against the Boston Uprising. The win must taste all the sweeter for Shanghai’s new tank Young-jin “Gamsu” Noh, who got surprise-traded from Boston to Shanghai this month.

Overwatch League Team Slogan ‘Texas Hard’ Deflated by Boner Jokes

At the end of January, Overwatch League team the Houston Outlaws revealed their season two roster and, with it, a new slogan: “#TexasHard.” They hoped fans would wield this hashtag with sincerity and heart, evidently having forgotten that they were on the internet, where that has literally never happened. Today, they changed it. The top…

Up-And-Coming Squad Looks To Break Out At This Weekend’s Big Dota 2 Tournament

Gambit Esports, a Russian esports organization based in the UK, has never been known for its prowess in Valve’s strategy game Dota 2, but this weekend that might change as the newcomers continue continues marching toward the finals at ESL One Katowice 2019 in Poland. Led by relative veteran Artsiom “fng” Barshack from Belarus, the…

Symmetra Makes Her First Real Appearance Ever In Overwatch League

It finally happened. After an entire season in which Overwatch’s oft-abused queen of holograms was relegated to troll pick (and immediate switch) status, an OWL player finally played Symmetra for real tonight at the league’s second season debut. It was the second map of Los Angeles Gladiators’ match against Seoul Dynasty. LA had taken the…

Esports Will Be Your Valentine 

Don’t have a special someone with whom to share foot rubs and chocolate-covered strawberries tonight? No worries, esports is here for you. Have a special someone but don’t feel like trying to make-up last minute plans to impress them? Esports has you covered there, too. In esports this is called a double-kill, otherwise known as…

The Big Stories To Follow For Overwatch League Season Two

Tomorrow, after several cold, OWL-less months, Overwatch League season two kicks off. The first season had its ups and downs, fittingly ending on a simultaneously high and low note with a blockbuster grand finals match in New York that ended up being a one-sided blowout. Since then, a lot has changed, leading to questions about…

Overwatch League’s Once-Dominant Team Opens Up About Their Season One Failings

New York Excelsior’s first season in the Overwatch League ended with more questions than answers, most of them boiling down to some variation on “What happened?” The answer to that question depends on who you talk to. Two members chalk it up to the choppy waters of a shifting meta, but to hear another tell…

PCs Would Make FIFA Tournaments A Lot Simpler

There are still 13 weeks of matches left in the English Premier League’s 2018-2019 season, but EPL teams’ glory in the world of esports will be on the line this weekend in the FIFA eClub World Cup taking place in London. I hope it hurt you to see that lower case “e” as much as…

Yoshi’s Story Is Back In This Weekend’s Smash Tournament

“Yoshi’s Story” is an extremely small Super Smash Bros. stage that first appeared in Smash Bros. Melee. Now it’s in Smash Bros. Ultimate, and the organizers of Genesis 6 have decided to make it playable in one of Smash’s biggest annual tournaments this weekend, showing a healthy willingness to experiment when it comes to the…

Overwatch League season two’s “all-access pass” will include first-person camera options for each player. The $14.99 package also includes other viewing options and bonuses, but fans have been requesting a first-person camera since the start of season one last year. Now they’ve got it. Well, if they’re willing to pay.

Even 20 Years Later, Dance Dance Revolution‘s Competitive Scene Has Still Got It

Dance. All. Night. That’s what Dance Dance Revolution pros from around the world will be doing this weekend when they compete at the Konami Arcade Championship event in Japan. Tonight there’s the Super Extra Exclusive DDR tournament pulling in 32 players based on rank and qualifying points. On Saturday, the six best players in the…

Competitive Virtual Farming Is Getting Its Own Esports League

After making the Farming Simulator games for over a decade now, the Swiss game studio Giants Software announced today it’s decided to make the series into a full blown esport by committing 250,000€, or approximately $284,803 in prize money to the establishment of a Farming Simulator League wherein teams of three will compete to see…

The Capcom Crossover Fighting Game People Hardly Ever Talk About

It’s cold out here in the northern part of the country as we head into the dead of winter, with a major winter storm on the way reaching from California to Maine. A perfect time, in other words, to get snowed in and cozy up to the Frosty Faustings event taking place this weekend that’s…

Competitive Halo Goes Old School With The Halo 3 Classic Tournament 

While the competitive Halo scene has been losing some steam in recent years, there’s no end of love and nostalgia for the earlier games in the series, especially Halo 3. This weekend a mix of pro teams and grass roots teams will duke it out in St. Louis in the first of many Halo 3…

Overwatch Pro Quits After Harassment Over Whether She Was Really Playing [UPDATE]

Update – 10:30 PM, 1/04/19: Since the publication of this story, new signs have emerged that Ellie may not have been who people thought she was. Earlier today, Aspen, an Overwatch streamer for esports organization Cloud 9, claimed that top-500 player Punisher—her friend—was Ellie after all. “Ellie is not Ellie,” she said during a stream.…