Esports

Male-Only Video Game Tournament Sets Off Controversy

Women aren’t allowed to play Hearthstone in one upcoming multi-national tournament, and the gender discrimination has triggered a great deal of controversy this morning. The South Korea-based International eSports Federation holds competitions in various video games, split up by gender. This year’s games for men are Dota 2, StarCraft II, Hearthstone, and Ultra Street Fighter…

Health Issue Sparks DOTA 2 Controversy

There’s been some controversy over the weekend surrounding Valve’s big DOTA 2 tournament, The International, and how the company (and one team involved) has handled the roster of one of the competing teams. That team is Fnatic, and the player at the centre of the mess is Adrian “Era” Kryeziu (pictured, below), who suffers from…

Dota 2 Tournament Prize Pool Exceeds $10 Million

The prize pool for Valve’s big Dota 2 tournament ‘The International’ was already the largest in eSports history a month ago, when it was around $6 million. Today it exceeded $10 million which means it is now one of the biggest prize pools among any tournaments. To be exact, it’s currently a little bit more…

The MLG (Major League Gaming) Championship in Anaheim is going on all weekend long. You can watch people playing Call of Duty: Ghosts, Super Smash Bros. Melee, StarCraft II and Injustice: Gods Among Us much better than you right here.

‘Cheating’ Scandal Hits $10,000 Hearthstone Tournament

Yesterday, competitive Hearthstone player Radu “RDU” Dima won the DreamHack tournament for Blizzard’s digital card game, going home with $10,000. But the big win comes with an asterisk: during the second match of the finals, observers saw Dima’s in-game Hearthstone friends sending him in-game messages that included information about the cards in his opponent’s hand.…

StarCraft Pro Foiled By His Biggest Foe Yet: A Champagne Bottle

You might think the grand finals are the hardest part of any eSport tournament, but for some players that’s not the case. Korean StarCraft II player TaeJa, who—after winning 17 tough matches at Dreamhack—got defeated by the champagne bottle. He was simply unable to open it. And since it’s not the first time something like…

A Match On The New Version Of League of Legends’ Most Popular Map

With Dota 2 and all these upcoming MOBAs knocking on the door, and because League of Legends‘ popular map, Summoner Rift, is getting old and dated, Riot is working on an update and a graphical facelift. So here’s the dev team showing us their progress with the update. It looks pretty cool so far and…

When Players Try Dota For The First Time

I’d say it’s the camera distance that’s a bit distracting when switching from LoL to Dota, but YouTuber Fortunatus Sean had other issues. His video is a great example that even with tutorials, it can be challenging to switch games within the same genre. What happens when a LoL player tries DotA 2 [YouTube] To…

Robbed Dota 2 Players Say Game’s Community Saved Their Lives

Two Dota 2 players who were robbed at gunpoint in the middle of live-streaming a match of the popular competitive online multiplayer have come forward to offer their accounts of what happened. The players, who go by the handles SUNSfan and Sajedene online, were at home in in Tempe, Arizona early Monday morning when their…

Dota 2 Gamer Gets Robbed At Gunpoint While Streaming (UPDATE)

A Dota 2 player in Tempe, Arizona was robbed at gunpoint in the middle of playing a match of the popular online video game and broadcasting it on Twitch. News of the the robbery began to circulate online almost instantaneously since the game was being live-streamed. You can watch the portion of the video that…

My Big Day Out at the Pokémon National Championships

A boy is crying in front of me. He’s being spoken to by an official-looking woman in a red and black t-shirt, a sad toothy grimace etched across his wet face. His mum stands next to him, listening patiently. Every few moments she turns to her son and repeats what’s just been said in a…

Booth Falls On Pro Gamer’s Head, But He Still Wins

Pro StarCraft II player Koh “GuMiho” Byung Jae was playing in Korea the other day when he suffered a pretty drastic technical mishap: the booth he was sitting behind collapsed, hitting him in the head and sending his monitor flying into his face. It looks like it him him pretty hard, so his stunned look…

Top League Of Legends Pros Suspended, Kicked Off Team For Being Jerks

Two top League of Legends players have been banned from competitive play for six months because of “extremely toxic behavior.” Shortly after the ruling came down from League developer and publisher Riot Games, the players’ team also removed them from their roster. The two players in question were both members of the European team Ninjas…

Yes, The Blue Team Has An Advantage In League of Legends

Red versus Blue. Shirts versus skins. Zombies versus humans. These are all surface level distinctions, saying nothing meaningful about one team’s likelihood of trouncing the other…right? If only there was some way to quantify the results of many different matches of a particular game and then use this information to come to a conclusion. Big…

Every Type Of MOBA Player

From the live-streamer to the douchebag, the world of multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) games is full of archetypes. Here’s YouTuber shocknickfilms with a funny take on the personalities you might find in games like Dota 2 and League of Legends Every Type of LoL Player 2 [YouTube] To contact the author of this post,…

What Losing In StarCraft Really Feels Like

It’s always a sad thing in StarCraft II when our perfect build and strategy is blown into pieces in seconds by the other player. Here’s channelman with a really funny clip showing the differences how these moments look in reality and how they look and feel for the players on the losing side. Obviously, the…

Watch The League of Legends All-Star Tournament Right Here

The League of Legends All-Star tournament runs from Thursday, May 8 to Sunday, May 11, and you can watch it all right here. This tournament for Riot’s mega-popular multiplayer game brings the best League of Legend players from across the world to Paris for five-on-five arena battling. You can watch the livestream here: Full schedule,…

Watch a Former StarCraft Pro Play Heroes of the Storm

Greg “IdrA” Fields, one of the most controversial players of the StarCraft II scene, might no longer play as a pro, but as you can see he’s still around. He sat down with IGN and showed how to play properly with Tychus, one of the best DPS characters in Blizzard’s upcoming MOBA, Heroes of the…

A Spoken Word Song About Loving and Hating League of Legends

Riot Games knows that the community of players that’s built up around League of Legends can engage in some jerky behavior. They’re trying to fix that. If you want to know what’s bothering folks, the collective frustrations of many LoL enthusiasts can be heard in one man’s voice. He’s rapping. Kind of. Jesse Chisolm’s the…

46 Reasons Why You Keep Losing in StarCraft II

Finding excuses when we lose online is something we all sometimes do. It can be frustrating, after all. Tutorial Central collected a fair amount of StarCraft II-related ones, but most of them would apply to any competitive game. Here’s their clip below: It’s hard to argue with these (here’s an example of someone who can’t…