Esports

I Went To Australia’s League Of Legends Final And I Was Very Confused

According to Steven Hassan there are many different types of cults. There are destructive cults. The kind that separate you from family and friends, brainwash you — all that strangeness you hear about on 60 minutes. Moonie-style shit. Scientology. That’s one side of the cult spectrum. This post originally appeared on Kotaku AU. Then there…

Valve Put On A Dota 2 Match With 20 Players And It Was Crazy

Games of Dota 2 are usually played with two teams of five. So what happens if you double that number? A lot of things, most of them involving killing and/or dying. Valve pulled two surprises out last night during The International 5 (T15), its ongoing eSports event for its popular MOBA. The first was this…

Valve’s Dota 2 Tournament Stage Looks Pretty Cool

This must be one of the coolest eSports arenas we’ve seen so far. Valve’s annual Dota 2 tournament The International kicked off yesterday and they’ve built a stage that fits the $18 million total prize money. It’s not just the Dota map projected onto the stage, but whenever someone uses Ultimates or even basic spells,…

Watch Dota 2’s Biggest Tournament Right Here

The annual tournament for Valve’s popular online multiplayer game Dota 2 is just getting started, and this year the crowd-sourced prize pool is bigger than ever before. 16 teams will compete for prizes totaling $18 million over the next five days, with the first place team winning $6.4 million. Technically The International 5 (or TI5)…

Zeratul Banned From Heroes Tournament After Exploit Emerges [UPDATE]

Blizzard has benched the best assassin in its up-and-coming MOBA Heroes of the Storm, banning StarCraft star Zeratul from use in the game’s first real round of professional tournaments for the indefinite future. While Blizzard hasn’t exactly confirmed this, the Zeratul ban sure seems like it stems from a bug of some sort that was…

League Of Legends Team Sets New Record For First Undefeated Season

The European League of Legends pro team Fnatic just set a world record by becoming the first team in League Championship Series (LCS) history to win every game in an entirely season’s split. Nobody’s ever gone a full 18-0 before. Amazing! Fnatic finished its winning game against rival EU LCS team Unicorns of Love just…

Suspended League Of Legends Pro Admits He Leveled An Account For Money

Following his suspension for the League of Legends Championship Series (LCS) earlier this week due to allegations that he’d leveled another player’s account for $1,300, professional League player Yu “XiaoWeiXiao” Xian has come clean. He says he didn’t realize he was committing a “severe” offense. Xian’s team, Team Impulse, issued a statement last night confirming…

New eSports Drug Tests Are Full Of Loopholes

Pro gaming league ESL has decided to start administering tests for performance-enhancing drugs. If they’re serious about it, though, they’ve still got a lot of work ahead of them. In the wake of pro Counter-Strike players’ admissions that they’d been chomping on ADHD drug Adderall for a boost of a not entirely rules-friendly variety, the…

Here’s an interesting nugget of League of Legends eSports information: GameSpot interviewed a bunch of North American pro players and found that an overwhelming majority would prefer the League Championship Series (LCS) format be changed to best of two games, rather than best of one. I think they all have a point.

League Of Legends Pro Suspended For Allegedly Leveling Accounts For Cash

Professional League of Legends player Yu “XiaoWeiXiao” Xian was suspended from the game’s ongoing championship series today as Riot began an investigation into allegations that he played on other people’s accounts to help level them up in exchange for money. This process of paying another, more highly skilled League player to take control of an…

Pro Gaming League Will Drug Test Its Players

In the wake ofpublic admissions that a whole bunch of pro Counter-Strike players have been taking the ADHD drug Adderall, the ESL (Electronic Sports League) have announced plans to start drug testing their competitors. Motherboard reports that while the ESL won’t be taking action against any of those who admitted to taking the drug previously,…

15-Year-Old StarCraft Pro Shows How To Play Protoss Properly

American protoss player Arium showed us during this year’s Dreamhack Valencia how to annihilate an entire Zerg army and win a match with two protoss Immortals and a single Warp Prism. And this wasn’t just a random game. He played against one of the best zergs out there: the Korean GSL veteran Symbol Arium (who’s…

The Injuries That Are Ending eSports Careers

They may be sat behind a desk instead of being out on a field or court smashing into other humans, but that doesn’t mean esports players are immune from career-threatening injuries. Motherboard has a great interview up with Dr. Levi Harrison, a hand and arm surgeon based in Los Angeles. Harrison—who specialises in athlete injuries—tells…

Ganging Up On A League Of Legends Pro Is Never A Good Idea  

Oh man. I bet these two League of Legends players thought they were being so clever, teaming up at the very beginning of the match to jump into top lane and surprise their opponent who was all alone up there. The would-be ambushers should have checked the in-game handle of their target more carefully, because…

Pro Counter-Strike Player: “We were all on Adderall”

In an interview with Mohan “Launders” Govindasamy, pro Counter-Strike player Kory “SEMPHIS” Friesen was asked whether “everyone does Adderall” at certain esports events. “Yeah”, was the answer. Via Motherboard, the admission centred on an ESL event in Poland in March where the communication between Friesen and his teammates was…a bit much (you can see the…

Red Bull’s eSports division is producing a documentary web series on pro Dota 2 player Jimmy ‘DeMoN’ Ho’s journey to last year’s lucrative International tournament. Like many of Red Bull’s forays into eSports journalism, it’s surprisingly good! You can watch the first episode on their YouTube channel

It’s the final day of the 2015 Pokémon US National Championships. While the Trading Card Game champion has already been crowned, the video game competition is kicking off any minute (3PM Eastern, running late). Watch it live here.

League of Legends Team Owner Banned for Trying to Poach Players

In an unprecedented move, Riot Games has booted a professional League of Legends team owner from participating in its own championship series until 2017. The surprisingly harsh ban is punishment for the man trying to scoop up players from rival teams in the middle of the current LCS 2015 season. The offending team owner is…

League Of Legends Players Leave Team Amidst Hacking Scandal

When Riot Games said that it was suspending the coach of the European League of Legends team Copenhagen Wolves, it seemed like the team had managed to survive its brush with a major eSports scandal. But two high-profile departures this week and a series of leaked documents show the team is still reeling. Copenhagen Wolves’…

Basketball Injury Takes Out Top League Of Legends Player

Oh, the irony. Professional League of Legends player Yiliang “Doublelift” Peng has been sidelined from his position on the North American team Counter Logic Gaming (CLG) due to an IRL sports injury. Peng gashed his pinky finger playing basketball recently, deep enough that he needed to get stitches: DoubleLift told The Daily Dot that he’s…