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Bymas to Miss IEM Katowice 2022 Due to Covid-19 

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Bymas to Miss IEM Katowice 2022 Due to Covid-19 

Lithuanian CSGO Pro, Aurimas ‘Bymas’ Pipiras tested positive for Covid-19 just 2 days before the start of IEM Katowice 2022. This renders him ineligible and he will have to sit out the whole tournament, after contracting the Virus so close to the start of the competition. 

MOUZ will replace their young rifler with Jon ‘JDC’ de Castro from their academy team, MOUZ NXT. The 21-year-old has been with MOUZ NXT since the inception of the roster and won 2 back to back WePlay Academy Leagues with them. MOUZ’s remaining roster will be playing in Poland, as they did not test positive for COVID-19.

IEM Katowice would be the debut tournament for the current iteration of MOUZ, after they added NBK- and torszi in place of ropz and acoR back in January 2022 once the 2021 CSGO season had ended for them. NBK- would be returning to CS after a short stint in Valorant while torszi has been promoted from the academy roster to take over as AWPer.

JDC will play in yet another Grand Final of the WePlay Academy League on Sunday, before he travels to Poland to play with MOUZ’s main team. “Auri (Bymas) really deserved to play this tournament. The situation is unfortunate. The team has made tremendous progress daily, and this is a true bummer. JDC is a great stand-in though, so let’s go!”  said MOUZ coach Dennis “⁠sycrone⁠” Nielsen

This isn’t the first case of a player having to sit out of IEM Katowice, as earlier FaZe Clan’s star ropz contracted Covid-19 too and would be out of action for the early stages of IEM Katowice 2022. FaZe Clan CSGO called upon former Complexity player Justin ‘jks’ Savage to take ropz’s place. Should FaZe advance, ropz would be back in the team by February 19 after he completes his permanent quarantine period and tests negative again.

MOUZ’s CSGO roster for IEM Katowice will be:

  • David “⁠frozen⁠” Čerňanský
  • Christopher “⁠dexter⁠” Nong
  • Nathan “⁠NBK-⁠” Schmitt
  • Ádám “⁠torzsi⁠” Torzsás
  • Jon “⁠JDC⁠” de Castro (stand-in)
  • Dennis “⁠sycrone⁠” Nielsen (coach)

f0rest Becomes First CSGO Pro With More than 40,000 Kills

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f0rest Becomes First CSGO Pro With More than 40,000 Kills

Swedish CSGO Pro Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg set a new record in the game as he has now amassed over 40,000 kills in professional play. f0rest achieved this record during a game between Dignitas and 9z Team at ESL Challenger in February 2022. Although dignitas lost the game, f0rest had 55 frags in the 3 map series, which brought his tally from 39,999 to 40,054. 

f0rest has been playing CSGO professionally ever since its launch in 2012. Before that f0rest was a legendary name in the CS 1.6 and the original Counter Strike days, starting his career back in 2003. During his 1.6 days he played for big names such as SK Gaming and Fnatic and won multiple Counter Strike Majors.

After moving to CSGO in 2012, f0rest represented legendary org Ninjas in Pyjamas for 7 years from 2012 to 2019. f0rest, along with former teammate GeT_RiGhT, is widely regarded as one of the best players of his time with so many accolades to his name. f0rest and GeT_RiGhT formed one of the longest partnerships of all time in Counter-Strike. Their first stint of partnership lasted 3,902 days, from the time GeT_RiGhT joined Fnatic on January 19, 2009, to when he stepped down from NiP on September 26, 2019.

They then reunited on Dignitas in January 2020, but GeT_RiGhT was benched in September, while f0rest is still going strong at the age of 33. f0rest’s consistency and longevity at this age and the ability to keep up with players a lot younger than him is admirable as a lot of players from his time have either retired or are unable to keep up, yet f0rest keeps going.

HOW LONG DID IT TAKE F0REST TO GET TO 40,000+ CSGO KILLS?

f0rest started playing CSGO back in 2012 and has played the game professionally for almost 10 years now. f0rest has played 2040 maps in CSGO and got his 40,000th kill in his 2040th map. If we crunch the numbers, f0rest averaged about 19.63 kills every map, which is no mean feat at the highest level of CS. To this day f0rest maintains a rating of 1.11 with a K/D ratio of 1.17. f0rest re-signed with Dignitas for the 2022 CSGO season and will stay with them for another year, and has shown no signs of slowing down.

WHO HAS THE MOST KILLS IN CSGO?

f0rest tops the list for the highest kills in CSGO with 40,054 but there are other players in the list who are still active in the game. Top 5 CSGO players with most kills:

  1. Patrik ‘f0rest’ Lindberg – 40,054
  2. Janusz ‘Snax’ Pogorzelski – 39,043
  3. Richard ‘shox’ Papillon – 37,770
  4. Kenny ‘kennyS’ Schrub – 37,067
  5. Nathan ‘NBK-’ Schmitt – 36,741

f0rest is active with Dignitas’ CSGO roster while Polish legend ‘Snax’ currently plays for MONKEsports after a year with Anonymo. shox joined Team Liquid this year, after spending 2 years with Team Vitality. kennyS is currently the only one without a team after his benching from G2,  and it is rumored that he will be building a roster with former teammate amaNEK. Lastly, NBK- is back in CSGO with MOUZ, after spending a few months playing Valorant once he was benched from OG CSGO back in February 2021. He will play his first game for MOUZ at IEM Katowice 2022 play-ins.

Fan Creates s1mple’s Portrait With Rubik’s Cubes

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Fan Creates s1mple’s Portrait With Rubik’s Cubes

Natus Vincere’s superstar Aleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev has a huge following of fans, which is no surprise as he has arguably been the best CSGO player in the world for a few years. Fans recreate his legendary plays in other games such as Minecraft and Roblox but this time a fan went the extra mile and made a portrait for s1mple. This wasn’t a regular portrait either as it was made using Rubik’s cubes.

Instagram user space.xxl posted the portrait he made 4 weeks ago. The portrait was based off of s1mple’s celebrations at IEM Katowice 2020, the last LAN event before the coronavirus pandemic. 

s1mple portrait using 204 Rubik’s Cube
by u/iwna in GlobalOffensive

The portrait was also posted to reddit by user u/iwna. Space.xxl used 204 Rubik’s cubes to recreate the iconic image of s1mple. 

This isn’t the first time that space.xxl has created a portrait of someone famous through Rubik’s cubes, he has previously made portraits of footballer Ronaldinho, actor Keanu Reeves as well as Team Spirit’s DOTA 2 team after they won The International 2021.

s1mple had previously posted the portrait on his instagram story as well, when space.xxl first posted it on 11th January.

s1mple’s Rough Start to 2022

After being the best player of 2021, winning a Major, a total of 8 MVPs and a plethora of other trophies, s1mple arguably had the best year ever for a CSGO Pro. He also became the first player to reclaim the #1 spot on HLTV’s top 20 list, something which hadn’t been done before. GeT_RiGhT had won for 2 consecutive years in 2013 and 2014, olofmeister in 2015, coldzera won consecutively in 2016 and 2017 and s1mple won in 2018. ZywOo then took the throne away from s1mple for 2 years, being #1 in 2019 and 2020 while s1mple was #2.

s1mple came back with all guns blazing as he wrecked everyone in his path to take back the #1 spot as ZywOo finished second and NiKo third.

NaVi and s1mple had somewhat of a rough start to 2022, as they lost their first official to MIBR. This was followed by another OT loss to Astralis and NaVi were on the verge of elimination. They then bounced back with a win against Team Liquid but lost to NiP. They finally took their revenge against Ninjas in Pyjamas in the Last Chance Stage and qualified for BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2022. The true test for NaVi and every other team for that matter would be at IEM Katowice, which starts on February 15th with the play-in stage. The playoffs for IEM Katowice 2022 will take place at the Spodek Arena, on LAN with a crowd. 

Which Teams Qualified for BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2022?

Mohd Laraib
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Which Teams Qualified for BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2022?

The first Pro CSGO tournament, BLAST Premier Spring Groups, has just wrapped up. The event took place online due to coronavirus restrictions and featured a total of 12 teams. The 12 partner teams of BLAST, played out in a newer format. The format consisted of 3 Bo1s for seeding. The teams that one all 3 would go through to the Finals of the play-ins, the teams that won 2 would be in the semis and the teams that won 1 or 0 games would play in the elimination games. The new format received criticism from some people in the CSGO community as it allowed way too many chances for some teams even after they had lost multiple games.

WHO PARTICIPATED IN BLAST PREMIER SPRING GROUPS 2022?

Blast Premier Spring Groups featured 12 teams that are partnered with Blast received a direct invite. A lot of these teams were making their debuts with their new rosters such as G2 esports, FaZe Clan, Team Vitality, EG, and Team Liquid.

The teams at BLAST Premier Spring Groups were:

  • G2 
  • Complexity
  • BIG
  • NiP
  • Natus Vincere
  • MIBR
  • Astralis
  • OG
  • Team Vitality
  • FaZe Clan
  • Evil Geniuses
  • Team Liquid

WHICH TEAMS QUALIFIED FOR BLAST PREMIER SPRING FINALS 2022?

BLAST Premier Spring Groups had 6 spots up for grabs for the BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2022, that would take place on LAN. BLAST’s Season Finals events consist of just 8 teams, 6 of which qualify through the Season’s (Spring and Fall) Groups and the remaining 2 from the Season Showdown. 

6 teams from Spring Groups failed to qualify for the Finals and had to drop down to the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2022. 

The teams that did confirm their spot at BLAST Premier Spring Finals 2022 are:

  • G2
  • BIG
  • NaVi
  • FaZe Clan
  • Team Vitality
  • OG

WHO WILL PLAY AT THE BLAST PREMIER SPRING SHOWDOWN 2022?

Blast Premier Spring Showdown is a 16 team single elimination tournament which allows teams to qualify for the BLAST Premier Spring Finals. The Spring Showdown has a total of 16 teams, 7 of which are invited and the rest through qualifiers. This year the showdown has been divided into the North American Bracket and the EU bracket and each will have 8 teams.
The teams that will be at the BLAST Premier Spring Showdown 2022 are:

  • MIBR
  • NiP
  • Astralis
  • Complexity
  • Evil Geniuses
  • Team Liquid
  • TBD- Invited
  • TBA – Asian Qualifier
  • TBA – Iberian Qualifier
  • TBA – North American Qualifier
  • TBA – Oceanic Qualifier
  • TBA – CIS Qualifier
  • TBA – Wester EU Qualifier
  • TBA – Easter EU Qualifier
  • Nordic Masters
  • FiReLEAGUE Latin Power

Here’s How Ex CSGO Pro PashaBiceps Entry Into MMA Went

Mohd Laraib
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Here’s How Ex CSGO Pro PashaBiceps Entry Into MMA Went

Former Professional Player and CSGO Legend Jarosław “pashaBiceps” Jarząbkowski forayed into the world of MMA, adding another medal to his esteemed name and career. Pasha has had a remarkable career in CSGO, winning various titles including a CSGO Major. After retiring from professional play, pashaBiceps turned to streaming and is signed to Team Liquid at the moment.

Apart from the world of esports, pashaBiceps is now an MMA fighter as well and participated in his first fight at the Polish Gala High League PL. pashaBiceps has been a keen gym enthusiast and Bodybuilder, hence the name, and has now taken the next step by starting his career in MMA.

Pasha took on Influencer and Bodybuilder Michal “OwcaWK” Owczarzak, and got through him with ease as he finished the bout in just 2 rounds. The fight isn’t your typical MMA fight but rather ‘dirty boxing formula with small gloves to MMA.’, according to the Polish Major winner. OwcaWk was also making his MMA debut with this fight and went toe to toe with pasha at the start.

In the first round, the battle was almost even as both showed signs of this being their debut fight. Towards the end though, pashaBiceps had a knockdown on his adversary Owca, which sent the bodybuilder stumbling. 

After getting back in his groove, round two started and owca tried to be aggressive towards pasha. pashaBiceps was all too aware and was able to dodge and land a right hook on his face. He followed it up with multiple blows to his face and cornered him until the referee had to step in and declare submission to strikes.

According to owca’s Instagram, he suffered a broken eye socket and a retina issue because of the fight.

There was an outpour of support for pasha from the world of esports. Be it Pro players like Christopher ‘GeT_RiGhT’ Alesund, Alex ‘ALEX’ McMeekin and Gabriel ‘falleN’ Toledo, casters such as Jason ‘moses’ O’toole, Anders Blume, the official FACEIT Account, the VP of IEM ‘carmac’ or even the Official CSGO account, everyone changed their Twitter profile pictures to that of PashaBiceps, to show him their support.

The official CSGO account congratulated pasha after his fight as well. 

This isn’t the first time that high-profile celebrities are getting into the world of MMA. it started with KSI vs Logan Paul in 2019 and has continued since, with Logan Paul fighting Boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. in June 2021 being the latest one.

pashaBiceps has no plans for stopping and said that this was only the beginning, signaling to the fact that he will continue his stint in MMA

Pokemon Unite Championship With $1 Million Prize Pool Revealed

Sonu Banerjee
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Pokemon Unite Championship With $1 Million Prize Pool Revealed

Over the past year, the free-to-play Pokemon MOBA title Pokémon Unite has taken the world by storm. With regular updates and a constantly growing player base, it is one of the most popular MOBAs out there and is available to play on multiple platforms including Android, Nintendo Switch, and iOS. 

While the esports scene behind the game hasn’t seen much traction yet, The Pokémon Company and Tencent-owned TiMi are looking to take things to the next level with a million-dollar Pokémon Unite championship that’s set to be organized soon. 

The details behind the heavily anticipated Pokémon Unite tournament have already been revealed, and fans are more excited than ever to know more about what the devs have in store for them.

Pokémon Unite Championship Series

The Pokémon Unite Championship Series will see teams across seven regions – North America, South America, Europe, Oceania, Japan, South Korea, and Asia-Pacific – battle it out to determine the best Pokémon Unite team in the world.

Players can participate in the tournament using the Nintendo Switch, iOS, or Android version of the game.

Each region will see two teams making it through to the World Finals with the exception of Oceania and South America, who’ll only have a slot each.

The regional qualifiers will reward participating teams with CP or Championship Points based on their performance. The teams with the most Championship Points will make their way through to the Regional Championships, while the best-performing teams in the regional Championships will qualify for the World Finals that’ll take place in London. 

The first open qualifier in the Pokemon Unite Championship is scheduled to kick off on February 19th and 20th.

Garena Free Fire removed from Google Play Store

The Crew
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Garena Free Fire removed from Google Play Store

After being removed from the App Store, Garena Free Fire has been taken off from the Google Play Store. Garena Free Fire is one of the most popular games ever released in mobile gaming. Launched in 2017, the game has over 110 crore downloads worldwide on Google Play Store.

It has come as a surprise for all the fans from across the globe that the game has been removed from App Store and Play Store.

At present, no announcement has been made from the game’s publisher Garena or Apple, or Google as to why the game is missing from the App Store and Google Play Store.

Moreover, another version of the game, Free Fire Max has also been unavailable to download in App Store.

Recently, Krafton sued Garena and has accused them of copying PUBG: Battlegrounds. Krafton said in their lawsuit, “Free Fire and Free Fire Max extensively copy numerous aspects of Battlegrounds, both individually and in combination, including Battlegrounds’ copyrighted unique game-opening “airdrop” feature, the game structure and play, the combination and selection of weapons, armor, and unique objects, locations, and the overall choice of color schemes, materials, and textures.”

This could be the major reason behind the game getting removed from both the stores.

As of now, Players who were looking to download the game have to wait for a while. As there is no information on when the game will be available back on both the stores.

Garena Free Fire gets removed from Apple App Store

Divyesh Moghe
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Garena Free Fire gets removed from Apple App Store

Garena Free Fire has been delisted from Apple App Store in the last few hours. The reason behind removing Free Fire from their store was not released by Apple and Garena has not commented on it as well.

This could be a simple glitch but there are many things at play which could directly lead to the indefinite removal of Garena Free Fire from the official application stores.

Garena Free Fire is a popular battle royale game and shares a ton of similarities with PUBG Mobile.

Krafton has sued Garena for this exact reason and stated that they have created a “PUBG Replica” in their lawsuit.

The lawsuit was also extended to Google and Apple for distributing this alleged copies via their app stores. Krafton had said the following in their claims:

“Free Fire and Free Fire Max extensively copy numerous aspects of Battlegrounds, both individually and in combination, including Battlegrounds’ copyrighted unique game opening “air drop” feature, the game structure and play, the combination and selection of weapons, armor, and unique objects, locations, and the overall choice of color schemes, materials, and textures.”

Krafton Inc. had filed this complaint at the US District Court in California. The implications of this lawsuit were not apparent until now.

The removal of Free Fire from App Store could simply be a glitch but as the time passes, some users have stated that they are having problems while accessing the game.

This could be a coincidence or the game might be on its way to face a shutdown on iOS devices.

It is still too soon to imply any conclusions and hence, updates from the relevant parties could shed a light on this situation.

Pokimane flees from two men after being harassed in public

Sarjyo Mukherjee
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Pokimane flees from two men after being harassed in public

Popular Twitch streamer Pokimane has revealed that she was harassed by two males when she was in a parking lot alone ahead of Valentine’s day.

Pokimane is a household name at this point. The streamer has established herself as one of the most influential gamers around the globe and people randomly recognizing her on the street is something that should not come as a surprise.

In her latest Instagram story, she revealed that while walking alone in a parking lot, she was harassed by two strangers who harassed her by their actions which prompted her to flee the scene as soon as she could.

Pokimane instagram story
Via Pokimane Instagram

“I was walking back to my friends (but was alone) in a parking lot when two guys started hollering at me,” Pokimane explained on her IG. “At first one of them sang ‘happy Valentine’s Day to you,’ I was like ‘uhh you too’.”

Things were normal to this point until one of them said “you could be the milk to my cereal with that skirt.” “I wanna see what’s under that skirt… show me what’s under that skirt…”,

This is where her flight reflex kicked in and she ran away from them as fast as she could.

Pokimane has warned her stans to avoid such behavior if they happen to meet her. With a rough start to 2022, Pokimane has been involved in quite a few controversies. She concluded her message by thanking her loyal fans “spread some awareness that this happens a lot, please be kind and stay safe and look out for your friends.”.

Valorant: Team Envy rebrands to OpTic Gaming

Bharat Kotwani
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Valorant: Team Envy rebrands to OpTic Gaming

Moving forward, Team Envy Valorant will play under the banner of OpTic Gaming as they have successfully rebranded with the Texas-Frisco based organization followed by an announcement on their twitter handle.

Envy Valorant who made it to the Valorant Champions 2021 will kick off their Valorant Envy Valorant who made it to the Valorant Champions 2021 will kick off their Valorant Champions Tour 2022 campaign under OpTic Gaming as Pujan “FNS” Mehta and co have been  acquired by OpTic Gaming who decided to venture into Valorant. Additionally, this acquisition is a part of the Envy-OpTic merger which took place back in November 2021 as OpTic have now expanded to take over Envy’s Valorant and  Overwatch League’s Dallas Fuel.

OpTic Valorant will debut at the soon to start VCT Stage 1 Challengers in North America where they will go against Rise in their Group B opener. The Stage 1 Challengers will feature a round robin group stage followed by a double elimination playoffs bracket which would determine two best teams from the clusters towards the two spots at the Stage 1 Masters event. The Challenges will start with Cloud9 taking over 100 Thieves.

The merger between OpTic and Envy saw both the sides invest in the Call of Duty League as OpTic Texas which saw the Hector “HECZ” Rodriguez owned organization drop the OpTic Chicago spot in affiliation with NRG Esports. With that being said, OpTic soon decided to take over the Overwatch Dallas Fuel and Valorant divisions of Envy.

The Envy-OpTic rebranding was initially teased by the OpTic Merchandise store, which had FNThe Envy-OpTic rebranding was initially teased by the OpTic Merchandise store, which had FNS in the OpTic jersey on their page. The takeover was also leaked by VCT itself when they accidentally revealed the schedule for the Stage 1 Challengers which had OpTic’s logo in place of Envy’s.

OpTic Valorant now have :

Pujan “FNS” Mehta (IGL)
Victor “Victor” Wong
Austin “crashies” Roberts
Jaccob “yay” Whiteaker
Jimmy “Marved” Nguyen (Loan)

Chet “Chet” Singh (Head Coach)

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