Esports

Crowd Shouts, Throws Things At Counter-Strike Tournament

Today, Virtus.pro swept a two game series against Cloud9 to win the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive finals at the DreamHack Open in Bucharest. The all-Polish team appeared all but unstoppable, defeating the Americans 16-9 on both the first map, Train, and the second, Cobblestone. However, during the finals, some people in the crowd began holding up…

Struggling Halo Team Replaces Players With Last Year’s Champions

Imagine it’s the end of the month. The new NBA season is about to start just days later, but right before that, a majority of the Los Angeles Lakers’ owners decided to cut their losses with the team and sign a new one. With a once proud legacy firmly in the rear-view mirror, they’d had…

The Weekend In Esports: Hearthstone Summer Championships

It feels like only yesterday I was sitting down to embark on Hearthstone’s latest adventure, One Night in Karazhan. Just over a month later and the scene is completely lit. Blizzard announced it would remove 45 cards from the game’s arena mode to try and restore some semblance of balance to the otherwise rigged casino,…

After Getting Kicked Off His Team, Counter-Strike Pro Returns To Help Them Win

In Kiev, Ninjas in Pyjamas are victorious after beating G2 Gaming in a swift, 2-0 series. The Swedes went 16-7 on the first map, Cache, followed by a much closer, 22-18 nail-biter on Overpass which found the Frenchmen unable to stop the bleeding. NiP’s commanding finish was helped in no small part due to Mikail…

Smash Player Wins Tournament, Is Awarded Bag Of Rice

Kamemushi, who came in second place at EVO 2016’s tournament for Super Smash Bros. for Wii U (Smash 4 for short), swept through the 25th Umebura tournament in Tokyo yesterday thanks to his lightning speed and brutal combos. His prize? One pair of headphones and a 66 pound bag of rice. After some 25 matches…

Focus Wins Over Flair In This Morning’s StarCraft II Tournament

“ByuN” Hyun Woo took home just under $35,000 after winning the GSL (Global StarCraft League) Season 2 finals earlier today in South Korea. You can watch him almost completely dominate his hot-shot opponent, Kim “sOs” Yoo Jin, across five separate matches below. The technologically advanced Protoss, helmed by sOs, took on ByuN’s brutish space marine…

Esports Team Caught In Controversy Over Undelivered Game [UPDATE]

Celebrity esports team FaZe Clan is taking heat for co-producing a video game that, over a year after its targeted launch date, remains unreleased. Backers donated nearly $20,000 to first-person shooter Starnet Eclipse, which critics are now calling a scam, an allegation FaZe Clan denies. In January of 2015, FaZe Clan announced they were co-producing…

Riot Games Co-Founder And League Of Legends Team Owner Clash Over Cash [UPDATE]

League of Legends earned publisher Riot Games $1.6 billion in revenue last year, but a public debate between community leaders is shedding light on how the game’s competitive players are financially vulnerable. Arguing over who deserves blame, Riot Games’ co-founder and a prominent League of Legends team owner are duking it out on public forums…

These Are Your 2016 Pokémon World Champions

Each year the very best Pokémon video and trading card game players meet at the World Championships to determine who the top trainers are, and each year the Masters (oldest) Division looks really awkward on stage. This year did not disappoint. I am so used to working on the weekends that I completely missed this…

Overwatch’s First Big Tournament Gives Out $100,000 In Prize Money

Overwatch’s first major international tournament was held over the weekend in Cologne, Germany. Hosted at Gamescom, Europe’s largest games trade show, the ESL Overwatch Atlanta Showdown saw competition from eight pro teams. With a prize pool of $100,000 in the balance, professional players busted out their best Tracers and most bad ass Genjis and fought…

Watch The Counter-Strike ELeague Championship Final Right Here

If you’re not sitting at home on a lovely Saturday afternoon watching TBS, at least you can watch the observer feed of ELeague Counter-Strike: Global Offensive championship showdown between Fnatic and Virtus.pro online. Welcome to the less-than-stellar side of esports on television, the television exclusive. Or perhaps its the best side. No muss, no fuss.…

Watch Nintendo’s Adorably Brutal 12-And-Under Smash Bros. Tournament [Update: All Done]

Nintendo is at San Diego Comic-Con, where they’ve gathered 64 young children to battle for your amusement in the most kid-friendly competitive game possible. It’s basically My First Smash Bros. Tournament, and it’s darling. (Autoplay warning.) If you’ve watched a Smash Bros. Wii U tournament and had trouble following the action, this is the event…

Infiltration Takes Out EVO’s First Ever Street Fighter V Tournament

Well, that’s EVO 2016 in the books. Infiltrationjust took out the biggest (and final) event, the tournament’s first ever Street Fighter V showdown. He was the last fighter standing from a field of 5000 entrants. Here’s a cool video from DopeDojo, who was in the crowd, showing the moment he took the title over his…

Report: Manchester United Want To Sign An Overwatch Esports Team

There’s a rumour going around that Manchester United, a name even our dear American readers will recognise, are interested in signing an Overwatch esports team. Do not let this news surprise you. Esports News UK report that United are among the bidders (along with Fnatic and another third party, rumoured to be German football club…

The Greatest Halo Player Of All Time Retired Yesterday

Everyone remembers the shock of playing online for the first time. I was never much of a PC gamer, so one of my first online multiplayer experiences was with Halo 2. It was, to be perfectly honest, demoralising. I think most of us can relate: you thought you were untouchable, you thought you were the…

Surprise, The World Esports Association Is Already In Trouble

It was only yesterday that I was breaking down the colossal farce that has become the unveiling of the World Esports Association. That was 24 hours ago — which reportedly was all that was required before the new world order began to unravel. IGN’s Kevin Knocke has been given the mother of all drops today…

New Esports Association Kicks Off With Terrible Interview

Last week the world of Counter-Strike was up in arms: someone was starting a new association for esports with a select group of teams in a manner that invited all manner of questions. What was the World Esports Association (WESA) about? What rights did the teams give up to be a part of the cabal?…

Blizzard Vows To Improve Twitch Chat After Hearthstone Racism Fiasco

During the recent Dreamhack Austin event, Hearthstone pro Terrence “TerrenceM” Miller came in second. It was quite a moment, a breakout performance for a relative unknown. And while many viewers were impressed, others in the thousands-strong Twitch chat refused to stop pointing out the obvious: Miller is black. You can probably guess which slurs were…

The ESL today announced the formation of the World Esports Association, an organization that’s designed to professionalize esports through regular structure and standardized schedules. Should be interesting to see where this goes.

Brazil Dominated DreamHack Austin’s Counter-Strike Tournament

An all-Brazilian Counter-Strike final at DreamHack Austin was probably not what the home-crowd wanted to see. But in the wake of today’s games, it’s undeniable that Brazil has become a regional powerhouse. The Sweden of the Americas. It happened in painful fashion for American fans. While Luminosity Gaming were an easy favorite to win this…