Esports

The 2016 Smite World Championship Kicked Off With A Complete Shutout

The goal in a Smite Conquest match is to kill enemy players, destroy their fortifications and eventually take down the titan guarding their base. In the first match of the 2016 Smite World Championship, one team accomplished none of those things. Thursday marked the first day of the annual competition, a series of best of…

CS:GO Players Dropped From Esports Team Following Match-Fixing Allegations

Roughly a fortnight after 24/7 eSports made a splash by recruiting Vietnamese Counter-Strike: Global Offensive team Skyred, following some impressive international performances earlier in the year, the Australian organisation has dumped their foreign superstars amid claims of match-fixing. The move, announced on the 24/7 website, came into effect immediately as there had been no contract…

The 2016 Smite World Championship Starts Tomorrow. Here’s What To Expect.

Ten of the top Smite teams from around the world have converged on Atlanta to see which one plays the deity-based MOBA well enough to earn $500,000 doing so. Here’s what to expect. First off, we’ll get a killer new cinematic trailer that prominently features Bellona, my favorite new champion introduced over the past year…

New ‘Smart Gaming Mouse’ Has A Tiny Screen On It For Some Reason

What’s the main thing you look at while PC gaming? Besides the monitor. And the keyboard. And the random things on your desk. And the window near your desk. And the ceiling. That’s right—your mouse. That’s why SteelSeries put a small OLED screen on theirs, I guess. To be fair, SteelSeries’ new Rival 700 gaming…

Activision Buys Out Major League Gaming [UPDATE]

UPDATE (1/4/16, 5:15pm): It’s official: Activision has purchased MLG, they announced in a press release today. Despite this weekend’s report, CEO Sundance DiGiovanni will actually stay with the company. Original article follows: According to a report from eSports Observer, Activision has entered into an agreement to purchase a majority of North American eSports organization Major…

Korean Pro Ends StarCraft Tournament Singing ‘Let It Go’

Protoss veteran MC proved once again he’s not just a good player, but one of the most entertaining figures of the StarCraft community. The ending of this weekend’s HSC XII should have been a sad one, since this was the last big match (at least for a while) of legendary player MMA, but his long…

The 2016 Halo World Championship Qualifiers Are Happening Right Now

Today teams from North America, the UK and various other places will vie online for a spot in the regionals and a shot at the $2 million 2016 Halo World Championship prize pool paid for by REQ-hungry fans. The biggest prize pools are the crowd-funded prize pools, and REQ purchases since the launch of Halo…

Riot’s making a big change to the League of Legends Championship Series format. Starting next summer, North American games will be best-of-3. European games will be best-of-2. The stated purpose of the two different formats is that they want to try both out and see which is better. Read the whole explanation here.

Ouch. via Alanah Pearce’s Twitter

Retired At 20: A Pro Gamer’s Life After eSports

In the ‘80s and ‘90s professional gaming was a pipedream for a few quixotic kids. At the highest of highs you might best the competition on Starcade and take home your very own personal computer. You didn’t get rich. Even Billy Mitchell, perhaps the most famous arcade player of all time, who’s held world records…

Watch The World’s Top 32 Street Fighter IV Players Battle For The 2015 Capcom Cup

The 2015 Capcom Cup Ultra Street Fighter IV tournament is taking place today at Sony’s PlayStation Experience event, with 32 of the best players in the world battling for their piece of a $250,000 prize pool. Watch it live right here! Daigo’s there. Justin Wong is there. I’m rooting for Luffy, but that’s just me.…

Suspended League Of Legends Pro Says He’s Leaving eSports Due To Depression

At the end of last week, longtime League of Legends pro Diego “Quas” Ruiz was suspended from Team Liquid after “an incident occurred […] at the Team Liquid HQ in Los Angeles.” His sudden departure confused and upset many fans. Today, Quas said that his lifelong “depression and anxiety issues” are the root cause. “I…

The Most Common Movement Mistakes In Counter-Strike

Some solid tips on movement and peeking angles. voo CSGO shows some of the mistakes new and even experienced players make a lot (strafing by using W too much for example) and how to fix them. Checking angles and positions is indeed the key to become good, and no matter how popular CS:GO is, tricks…

Speaking of dramatic shake-ups in League of Legends eSports, top European player Yellowstar just saidhe’s leaving Fnatic to go play in another region. The entire EU region is susceptible to a talent-drain this year as investment in eSports increases in the U.S. and China and teams there offer greater opportunities.

Flash, The ‘God Of StarCraft,’ Retires At Ripe Old Age Of 23

One of the very first, and very best, pro StarCraft players called it quits this week, ending his nine-year run in the game’s eSports circuit. And while he’s still only 23 years old, he’s been competing in StarCraft tournaments since he was fourteen Lee “Flash” Young Ho first made a name for himself in StarCraft’s…

Korea’s Top League Of Legends Teams Are Getting Some Big Roster Changes

The League of Legends eSports scene has been abuzz for the past day and a half about pre-2016-season changes coming to Korea—historically the strongest region for the game’s pro scene. The Daily Dot and The Score both report roster shuffles impacting major teams including SKT, this year’s World Champions. The most dramatic shake-up affected NaJin,…

Fight Breaks Out Backstage At Counter-Strike Tournament

Police were called to the Counter-Strike tournament at Dreamhack Winter over the weekend after a fight broke out backstage between DOTA 2 player Jonathan “Loda” Berg and esports journalist Richard Lewis. A statementreleased by the LAN party—the world’s biggest, with over 20,000 in attendance—says: During the afternoon today at DreamHack Winter 2015 there was an…

Europe’s best League of Legends team just lost two of its star players. This afternoon Fnatic announcedthat Heo “Huni” Seung-hoon and Kim “Reignover” Yeu-jin, the team’s top laner and jungler, are both leaving for “career opportunities in another region.” No word on what region that is yet.

Five Teams Advance From Smite‘s Super Regionals To The World Championships

A week’s worth of competitive Smite play at Hi-Rez Studio’s in-house esports arena has come to an end, resulting in three European and two North American teams taking trips to Atlanta this January. The week began with 12 teams, six from each region, ready to do battle in the third-person, god-powered MOBA. They gathered in…

All The Big Esports Events Happening This Weekend

There is a ton of major eSports content dropping this weekend. If you’re not too busy playing Overwatch now that Blizzard’s opened up the beta a little bit, you should watch some of it. Here are the four main events we recommend. The Smite Super Regionals Smite’s Regionals tournament is the last stop on the…