Esports

If League of Legends Champions Were Cartoon Characters

Here’s a messy, stinky Twitch, ready to ruin a League of Legends pool party. Concept artist and character designer Genevieve Tsai played with the idea giving her favorite League champions cartoony looks and personalities. And they’d look pretty neat after the Disney Afternoon surgery. Here’s Warwick, Soraka, Vi, Caitlyn, Blitzcrank and a superb image featuring…

League of Legends Cosplay Is Best Done By Pro Players

The League of Legends division of Korean pro team CJ Entus chose quite an interesting way to greet the new year. Instead of doing montage videos, they have dressed up two of their pros, Madlife and Flame, as League characters Blitzcrank and Ezreal. Here’s more pictures of Madlife’s super-buff “definitely not Blitzcrank” cosplay: And here’s…

Former World Chess Champion Gives His Take On eSports In 15 Tweets

Russian chess grandmaster and former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov is in Seoul to participate in a local sports fair. And since South Korea is the capital of eSports, it was inevitable for him to weigh in on League of Legends and StarCraft, which are essentially the number one rivals of chess. Here are his…

The Year In StarCraft II

Esports and StarCraft II in particular had a pretty cool and eventful year. Here’s a clip, edited by YouTuber Soohyung Kim, with all the memorable matches and moments from this year’s streams from MLG, the World Championship Series and other tournaments. It’s nice to see that a lot of the great, veteran personalities like MC…

Sports Experts on HBO Laugh at eSports

Some people just can’t accept that a competitive video game and its world championship finals can fill up a huge sports arena. In a recent episode of HBO’s Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel, where the show’s panelists discussed the events of this year, League of Legends got it in the neck. Is it a sport?…

The Heartbreaking Side Of Pro Gaming

Professional gaming is on the rise. Everyone’s playing, everyone’s getting paid to play, everyone’s watching, everyone’s happy. Right? Nope. Just like any other sport on the planet, for every winner, there is a loser. Yoon Sub “Locodoco” Choi is a pro League of Legends player. He’s had a pretty rough time lately, bombing out unexpectedly…

StarCraft Player Gets Pro Athlete Visa, Delays Military Service

In August, the U.S. government, for the first time ever, gave a professional gamer the kind of special visa it issues to professional athletes. It was largely thanks to lobbying by Riot Games, makers of League of Legends. Now the first visa has gone to a professional StarCraft player, and it gets him out of…

The Ten Most Defining Moments of League of Legends‘ Third Season

League of Legends stepped up its game as an eSport in 2013. More than 30 million people watched the World Championship finals, and it became the number one online game in many countries, including South Korea. After such a strong year, it’s no surprise a video with the best moments of the season would be…

LoL Contracts Get Heavy With Players, Ban Rival Streaming

First reportedin a story on OnGamers, if you’re signed up to take place in League of Legends’ League Championship Series, your contract bans you from streaming any game that can even remotely be seen as competition for Riot’s online juggernaut. That doesn’t just apply to streaming other games alongside their LoL broadcasts. It bars them…

League of Legends, Turned Into Final Fantasy VII… Has Potential

Would it be possible to transform League of Legends into a JRPG, specifically, Final Fantasy VII? The answer is yes! Thanks to Brazilian YouTuber Pato Papao, we now have a highly detailed LoL / Final Fantasy crossover fan-video, with the appropriate dances, moves and skills. There’s also plenty of extra little tidbits for those who…

Aw, Hel — Hi-Rez Studios‘ Smite is officially releasing on March. Having accrued some 2.5 million worshippers during open beta, the god-on-god MOBA will undergo a baptism-by-fire following its March 25 release, with a $100,000 launch tournament held in scenic Atlanta, Georgia. Still waiting for them to add Jesus.

Meet League of Legends‘ newest playable champion: Yasuo, the Unforgiven, a martial artist who uses the power of wind to defeat his opponents. He sure has some pretty exciting skills, especially his wind wall ability, which blocks all enemy projectiles—something that’ll likely cause ranged heroes many headaches. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every…

League Of Legends‘ Worlds Draw An Oscar-Worthy 32 Million Viewers

We knew a lot of people were watching SK Telecom T1 battle their way to the Summoner’s Cup in League of Legends‘ Season 3 World Championship, but 32 million? This year’s Oscars had 41 million, and that’s packed with people paid to make us love them. My first thought upon hearing the news, released today…

eSports Is Getting Its Own Network—MLG.tv [Corrected]

Video gaming’s not a sport? Don’t tell that to MLG.TV—an Internet-broadcast network that’ll showcase the league’s major events and, yes, broadcast a studio show with highlights and news, akin to the coverage that, yes, real sports get. MLG announced the new programming venture today in this story at TechCrunch. The broadcast will stream up 1080p…

What It Feels Like To Become StarCraft World Champion

Over the weekend, sOs (pictured) beat out 15 other competitors to take the title of 2013 StarCraft II World Champion. Dude seems pleased. As he should be! That’s not just the leap of a man who’s now a champ, but a man who is also $100,000 richer for his troubles. The pic was taken by…

Blizzard Turned StarCraft II Players Into Trading Cards

Further proving that eSports is all grown up and should be recognized as a real sport, Blizzard created a deck of StarCraft II trading cards. Baseball and basketball players have trading cards—why shouldn’t these guys have at least a few? The cards you see above will be handed out to lucky attendees during the game’s…

Blizzard has revealed the very first key artwork for their upcoming all-star game, Heroes of the Storm, which we should be seeing more of tomorrow at BlizzCon. Everyone’s here: Sylvanas from WoW, Nova from StarCraft, the Witch Doctor from Diablo, even Illidan and Anub’arak, I’m already sold! Here’s the full image with Tychus (a single…

Fake World of Warcraft Trailer Is Full Of Dream Features

BlizzCon starts Friday, and the hype around what could be a brand new World of Warcraft expansion is already out of hand. What will it be this time? Nagas? More Burning Legion? YouTuber iabeckman671, famous for his WoW Machinima, has his own (very fake) take: a trailer for every fan’s dream WoW expansion. It has…

League Of Legends Player Says He Makes Almost $1 Million A Year

And you thought guys only got into esports for the chicks Carlos “Ocelote” Rodriguez is 23 years old, and plays League of Legends for SK, a professional team from Europe. He’s good, very good, but he’s not one of the world’s best Not that it matters. According to a report on Spanish news site ABC,…

63 of DotA 2‘s 102 heroes, transformed into the angriest and cutest possible creatures by digital artist LS It’s really hard to pick a favorite. Maybe the trio of Traxex, Tiny and Pudge in the second row. Dayshot is an image-based feature that runs every morning, showcasing some of the prettiest,funniest game-related screenshots and art…