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Riot announces First Strike – Valorant Major

Sonu Banerjee
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Riot announces First Strike – Valorant Major

Riot Games’ entrance into the world of competitive shooters with Valorant has been nothing shy of spectacular. Through its unique and enjoyable gameplay mechanics, Valorant garnered the love of millions of fans across the world within a few days of its release and gave other titles in the genre like CSGO a run for their money.

Valorant is also continually showing signs of a promising future as an esport. As a result, several CSGO pros have switched to Valorant to pursue a professional career in Riot’s title. The announcement of the Ignition Series further escalated the growth of Valorant’s competitive scene and inspired tournament organizers to invest in the shooter.

This time, it appears like Riot has decided to take things to the next level, as they have announced First Strike – the first Valorant tournament to be officially conducted by Riot.

“VALORANT is a deeply competitive title, one for which esports is a critical extension of the experience we want to provide to players,” Whalen “Magus” Rozelle,

Senior Director of Global Esports said. “First Strike will be the first tournament produced by Riot Games and an important foundational step to establishing a regional legacy.”

First Strike will start with multiple regional qualifiers towards the end of October and will feature teams from North America, Europe, CIS, Turkey, Asia, Oceania, Brazil, and the Middle East. The regional finals will commence from December 3-6 when one team from each region will be crowned as winners of their respective regions.

“Since the launch we’ve been busy listening to your expectations and hopes for the future of VALORANT esports,” Rozelle said. “Both through the Ignition Series and hundreds of smaller tournaments, we received valuable insight from tournament operators and fans that we have incorporated into our plans for First Strike.”

The registrations for the First Strike are set to begin in the next few weeks. Details of the registration along with the rules for the tournament haven’t been specified by Riot as of yet. From what is known, players above the age of sixteen will be able to register for the tournament, with the minimum rank requirement being Immortal 1.

Also Read: Can We Expect a Valorant Mobile Version Soon?

PUBG Mobile Ban in India is going to be Permanent: Report

Divyesh Moghe
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PUBG Mobile Ban in India is going to be Permanent: Report

PUBG Mobile and its imposed ban in India have opened up a number of possibilities for the game’s future in India. Though there were some positive responses leading towards a potential urban, new reports suggest that the ban is not going to be lifted anytime soon.

PUBG Mobile was banned in India with 117 other Chinese apps for data mining and user privacy concerns. According to the official press release, these apps were blocked as they were “prejudicial to sovereignty and integrity of India, Defense of India and security of state and public order.”

According to a report by InsideSport, the sources have revealed that “MeitY is in no hurry to revoke the ban on PUBG or any other banned Chinese app.” It also says that “mere announcement” from PUBG Corporation to severe its ties with Tencent Games in India is not enough for the ban to be revoked.

“There is no discussion within the ministry officials to revoke the ban on any of the apps listed in the ban list. We will stay away from making any comment on any specific company or app” – Ministry Source

Though there is no direct indication that the statement corresponds to any specific app, viz PUBG Mobile, but the statement could not be completely ignored. There are several ways in which the statement can be misinterpreted, mainly on how PUBG Mobile ban could be “permanent” but that’s not the case, the ban may or may not be here to stay, but the speculations are futile for now.

PUBG Ban
PUBG Corporation is said to be in talks with Jio to form a potential partnership that may bring the game back to India.

Several may debate on how PUBG Mobile ban imposition is only related to the application and not the entirety of the game, which could just be relaunched with a different publisher, but even this information is strictly conjectured for now. The intricacies of this matter are unknown and hence making assumptions at this stage won’t lead anywhere.

Among Us 2 Cancelled By InnerSloth

Sonu Banerjee
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Among Us 2 Cancelled By InnerSloth

Over the past couple of months, InnerSloth’s multiplayer party game ‘Among Us’ has taken the internet by storm. The game of deception, stealth, and survival relies on simple game mechanics to make it enjoyable for millions of players worldwide.

The announcement of an upcoming ‘Among Us 2’ by the develovpers in August 2020 caught the world off guard, but it seems like there has been a change of plans following that decision.

Due to the unprecedented love Among Us has received from the fans, the developers have decided to call it quits to their upcoming project of Among Us 2 which was already in works. Instead, they’re about to put in all the effort to the current Among Us title to develop it further, the company announced today.

“We have decided to cancel Among Us 2 and instead put all our focus into improving Among Us 1,” they said through a blog dated September 24th. “All of the content we had planned for Among Us 2 will instead go into Among Us 1.”

Among Us wasn’t always as popular as it is today. The game was released in 2018 but failed to gain much traction as of late. The wheel of fortune turned for Among Us when it was picked up by several streamers and YouTubers around in August 2020. From then on, it was pretty much an uphill climb for the game.

Big YouTubers and renowned Twitch streamers like Pokimane, moistcr1tikal and even PewDiePie started streaming the game, which furthered the trendy game’s popularity.

New features in Among Us

InnerSloth has also announced their future plans for Among Us today, which includes new features and a map.

Here are some of the features that InnerSloth seems to be working on right now:

  • Servers: There servers in Among Us are infamous for crashing without warnings. The frequent crashes are quite frustrating for the players, and that’s why the devs have started working on ways to figure out the cause of the server issues. InnerSloth hasn’t given the players an ETA on when the servers will return to normal, but the issues can be expected to be fixed in the next couple of weeks.
  • Colorblind Support: Till now, it was extremely tough for colorblind players to enjoy Among Us, especially in random lobbies where people generally tend to use colors to identify each other. Some tasks, like the connecting wires task, also required being able to see colors clearly.

“We plan on adding other identifiers for players as well as certain color focused tasks (Like wires),” the blog said. “This should also open the potential for more colors. In the past, we couldn’t add more colors because it became too difficult to tell players apart.”

  • Friends and Accounts system: After this feature is implemented, players will likely be able to create in-game accounts and send friend requests to other players who they enjoy playing the game with. However, this feature will take quite a bit of time, according to the devs.
  • New Map: An upcoming new map for Among Us is currently in works. The initial layout is being designed by the team and the theme is set to be a “Henry Stickmin themed location”.

While the game is still extremely enjoyable to play as of now, these new updates are certain to take the gameplay experience to the next level. Currently, Among Us regularly rocks peak player counts of about 300,000 on Steam, which is a significant concurrent number of players, to say the least.

Free Fire Announced Global Partnership with KSHMR

Divyesh Moghe
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Free Fire Announced Global Partnership with KSHMR

Free Fire has announced a collaboration with American music producer KSHMR. The crossover will bring a unique in-game character along with an exclusive song from this collaborative effort.

https://www.instagram.com/p/CFeBOpEhHmg/?igshid=1nrecgks8rp1z

Free Fire has been constantly increasing its quality of content by accumulating more and more interesting partnerships and collaborations on their way. This collaboration will bring second music producer to the realms of Free Fire, first being Dj Alok. The first collaboration resulted in an exclusive character alongside a song release that was played live in Free Fire World Series 2019 Finals.

KSHMR will be entering the game as a new character called K and nicknamed as “Captain Booyah” The partnership will also create a new exclusive song and a music video. KSHMR said, “The song I wrote for this collab has the intention to inspire people all over the world.”

Free Fire also recently partnered up with La Casa De Papel or Money Heist that resulted in an entire month of exclusive Money Heist event. The event offered several in-game items and legendary skins. Alongside this, Free Fire also introduced solid regional content in India by partnering with Bollywood Star Hritik Roshan. India is a big market for Free Fire and the efforts are visible with the amount of in-game content that is being offered alongside the flourishing Esports side. Free Fire India Championship kickstarted the journey of Free Fire esports in India and the second edition of the same tournament is ongoing with ₹50,00,000 up for grabs.

Top 5 CS:GO Pros who Switched to Valorant

Sonu Banerjee
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Top 5 CS:GO Pros who Switched to Valorant

After decades of dominating the world of competitive shooters, Valve’s Counter-Strike series faced a huge challenge when Riot decided to make their entrance in the genre with Valorant. The tactical shooter garnered the attention of millions of players worldwide even before its actual release on June 2nd.

Needless to say, the launch of Valorant was a huge success and surpassed many expectations. At the same time, the game posed a serious threat to CSGO and its player base, which was slowly starting to shift towards Valorant. This was due to the fact that Riot was offering 128-tick low latency servers, unique gameplay with separate skills for agents, and optimal performance even for low-end systems.

It was only a matter of time before well-known faces in the competitive scene of CSGO were seen making a switch to Riot’s new title. The announcement of Ignition Series showed promising signs for a bright future of Valorant as an esport, which further escalated the trend of CSGO pros moving to Valorant 

Today, let’s take a look back at the top 5 professional CSGO players to date who have made the decision to pursue a professional career in Valorant and have proven their skills in both games in front of the world.

ScreaM

Starting the list off with a Counter-Strike legend, not many CSGO players exist today who aren’t familiar with the name of Adil “ScreaM” Benrlitom. The 26-year-old has defined the age of professional CS and is renowned for his marksmanship skills in the game. He has been termed as a “headshot machine” by avid fans due to his ability to consistently land headshots without fail. ScreaM was last seen playing for team GamerLegion before he eventually announced his retirement from Counter-Strike on 7th August 2020.

The Belgian started playing Valorant from the closed beta days of the game. He played for team Prodigy during the beta and helped them win a number of trophies. He was picked up by Team Liquid on 7th August and has recently landed a third-place finish at the BLAST Twitch Invitational with the team.

TenZ

Tyson “TenZ” Ngo is a (now former) professional CSGO player and streamer known for his time with the North American organization Cloud9. The 19-year-old retired from competitive CSGO on April 12th to pursue a career in professional Valorant.

TenZ was signed by Cloud9 for their Valorant roster at the time of his retirement from CSGO. The Canadian pro was the first player to reach the Valorant rank, which is now called Radiant and is the highest rank attainable, during the closed beta phase of the game.

Nitr0

Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella was a celebrated CSGO pro till the day of his retirement from Valve’s shooter. He was a part of Team Liquid’s CSGO roster and landed several first-place finishes in S-tier tournaments including IEM Chicago, ESL One: Cologne 2019, DreamHack Masters Dallas 2019, and others alongside his team.

He switched to professional Valorant and announced his retirement from CSGO after being signed by 100 Thieves on August 14th.

Freakazoid

Like TenZ, Ryan “FREAKAZOiD” Abadir is also a loved member of the CSGO community who made a name for himself during his time with Cloud9. The 27-year-old professional player and streamer announced his retirement from CSGO on May 10th this year.

FREAKAZOiD quit the Cloud9 CSGO roster in May 2016. He last played on team Swole Patrol, which had started disbanding prior to his departure. He is still seen streaming on Twitch quite regularly and boasts a follower count of 370k.

Mixwell

Oscar “mixwell” Cañellas Colocho is another huge name in competitive CSGO who has made the switch to Valorant. The veteran has been a part of major organizations including Optic Gaming, Cloud9, and G2. After going inactive from CSGO in late 2019, Mixwell made a return in the competitive scene to pursue professional Valorant when he was signed by G2 on June 16th.

Wrapping Up

Chances are high that the list of players switching from CSGO to pursue careers in Valorant will keep on growing further as the days pass. The active engagement with the community coming from Riot is something that Valve has certainly lacked for many years now, and fans are reciprocating the love towards Riot by making their shooter increasingly more popular.

Peacekeeper Elite League Season 3 Announced with Whooping $3M Prize Pool

Divyesh Moghe
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Peacekeeper Elite League Season 3 Announced with Whooping $3M Prize Pool

Peacekeeper Elite League(PEL) will enter into its third season, starting from September 25th. PEL brings a humongous prize pool of 21 million Chinese Yuan/ upto $3.1M up for grabs.

Peacekeeper Elite League is the highest tier Chinese league of the Peacekeeper Elite(Game for Peace), a Chinese rebranded version of PUBG Mobile. Top 20 teams from China battle into two stages; Regular and Finals; to overcome all the challenges and claim the title of Champions.

This is for the first time in the history of PUBG Mobile that the prize pool has crossed the $3 million mark. PEL Season 3 becomes the number one tournament to offer the biggest prize money for PUBG Mobile. The esports team is constantly working to raising the bars of PUBG Mobile and the efforts are evident. PUBG Mobile esports entered the million-dollar club after a combined prize pool of upto $1M was offered in PMWL: Season 0. The number was quickly doubled during the announcement of the upcoming PUBG Mobile Global Championship (PMGC) which offers $2 million.

PMGC has replaced PMWL: Season 2 and PMWC this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This tournament is considered to be the pinnacle of PUBG Mobile Esports as the best teams from around the world will compete during late November to claim the Global Champions title.

PEL: Season 3 can be considered as a regional tournament for China but still offers the highest prize pool than any other PUBG Mobile tournament. This is due to the fact that China is the biggest contributor to PUBG Mobile revenue earnings. The viewership also remains unmatched to any other mobile esports tournament around the world.

Pakistan Government Is Spying Gamers Over VoIP Communications

Md. Naseer Fuad Khan
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Pakistan Government Is Spying Gamers Over VoIP Communications

Pakistan gaming community is seriously outraged, and rightly so. The Pakistan’s Telecommunication Authority (PTA) is evidently interfering into all communications which are facilitated by Voice Over IP Addresses, a widely used term for internet phone calls. The tech & gaming community of Pakistan have jumped on a wagon to raise their voice on Twitter, where the subject is trending.

According to the sources, the PTA have limited the transmission of data packets, which is obviously, being noticed by the gaming community during communications. PTA implemented Web Monitoring System (WMS), which apparently is overseeing all the data and communications happening in the country for malicious activity.

The categorization of “grey traffic” by the Pakistan’s Government regulator is flawed, as all traffic in form of data packets under VoIP & VPN are considered shady. The gaming community, which refers to the in-game communication system as their primary source, are infuriated by this move.

ISP’s Are Responding Vaguely

One of our readers shared this screenshot of a response from Pakistan’s top telecommunication company.

Twitter users in Pakistan managed to garner attention after their systematic protest on the social media platform was trending. Hashtags, #BanPTA, #BoycottPTA was trending for a few hours after it was picked up by Internet celebrity Waqar Zaka. Waqar hosted a show on his YouTube channel “Pakistan is troubled by esports? how?”

ALSO READ:
Top CSGO Players in Pakistan
Top CSGO Teams in Pakistan

We got in touch with a few of our counterparts in Pakistan and furiously so, the gaming community is in shambles because of the decision. PTA has been constantly suggesting that they’re doing no wrong, they’re simply blocking communications and access by simply citing they’re simply “PTA blocks the source IP.”

PTA responded after media coverage

After media coverage from across the region, including ours, which garnered thousands of traction, the PTA has responded on the questions raised by the gamers.

The government regulator denies any ban on the packet transmission. Instead, they suggest the problem doesn’t even exist. “All gaming apps are working normal across Pakistan,” the tweet concludes in response.

Furthermore, the telecommunication watchdog is encouraging users who are facing packet loss to lodge a formal complaint with their service providers. This contradicts with what several other local media outlets in Pakistan reported, which suggested that ISPs are being asked by the government to block the IPs for VoIPs.

The gaming community in Pakistan has been clocking impeccable numbers which is drawing investors, brands to create an ecosystem for esports. While, this could simply be a temporary rollout of the feature, this could well bring the gaming community there in a bad light.

Pakistan Gaming Community Facing Heavy Packet Loss

Divyesh Moghe
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Pakistan Gaming Community Facing Heavy Packet Loss

The Pakistan Gaming community is facing high packet loss issues across all the online games from the past few days. Reports suggest that the issue became prevalent after the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA) introduced a new Web Monitoring System.

According to INC Pakistan, the gamers in Pakistan are facing heavy packet loss issues in multiplayer/online games. PTA is accused of causing this issue after the new Web Monitoring System was introduced. The report states, “All Virtual Private Network (VPN) and Voice over IP (VoIP) services are being considered as grey traffic and are re-routed through the new Web Monitoring System (WMS) implemented by Pakistan Telecommunication Authority (PTA). Unfortunately, online games fall under that category and PTA is simply blocking source IP that is carrying such traffic leading to high packet loss in online games for the gaming community in Pakistan.”

The Pakistani Gaming community and its prominent faces like Wakar Zaka have stepped forward and took it to the social media platform like Twitter to oppose this decision. Wakar Zaka was also seen taking actions against PTA when PUBG Mobile was banned, which was reverted in a few days.

In a YouTube video, Wakar Zaka calls out PTA for the ban and requests his followers to post their thoughts using hashtags like “#BanPTA” and “#BoycottPTA”. The effects are quickly seen as tweets are flooding in the support of this hashtag.

The games affected by this issue include almost all the famous titles like CSGO, Valorant, DOTA, PUBG, Free Fire, Fortnite, and others. The alleged imposition has completely stunted the growth of Pakistani esports according to the community. This news comes as a major factor that completely ruins the online gaming experience for the entire country.

Can We Expect a Valorant Mobile Version Soon?

Divyesh Moghe
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0
Can We Expect a Valorant Mobile Version Soon?

Valorant leaks suggest that the tactical shooter by Riot Games may soon be available on mobile devices. The recent Patch 1.08 has revealed some information after a new string of codes emerged in the game files following the update.

According to a Valorant YouTuber named SkillCapped, the new line of code refers to the ability to perform an action by tapping on the right-hand side of the screen. This clearly indicates that Valorant mobile is in the making as the feature is only available on touchscreen smartphones.

Valorant has emerged as a potential title right from the start when the game went into closed beta. Owing to a part of the success of famous streamers, the audience ranged into millions of concurrent viewers. With the emerging success, the title is rising to become a prominent esports title across the world.

Valorant Cross-Platform:

The game enthusiasts always demanded a multi-platform availability and the Valorant game director previously hinted towards mobile and console versions. “While we are exploring other platforms like console and mobile, right now the team is working hard to deliver a top-notch experience on PC,” Zeigler said.

With the indication of a mobile release, the console gamers can also expect the famous title to be available soon. While many questions arise about a mobile version, the most important one remains that will it be cross-platform or not. Games like Fortnite already work on cross-platform but there is a significant disadvantage to mobile players while fighting against PC or console gamers.

Valorant Mobile Challenges:

Valorant Mobile iOS

The challenges posed by a mobile game vary from just cross-platform gameplay. The core of Valorant is based on multiple unique skills available to every agent and providing so many toggle buttons is hard. The aiming and such other factors play a massive part in First Person Shooter games so providing a similar experience to multi-platforms is a big challenge.

Games like PUBG Mobile and Fortnite made a successful entry to mobile markets. Valorant was developed mainly for PC versions and hence providing a mobile port is very difficult. Another title of Riot Games named “Wild Rift” is being developed from over a year and hence one cannot expect Valorant mobile anytime soon.

Recommended: Valorant Battle Royale Mode may arrive soon

Valorant Battle Royale mode may arrive soon

Sonu Banerjee
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0
Valorant Battle Royale mode may arrive soon

At the time of its release on June 2nd, players of Riot’s FPS title Valorant were limited to playing only two game modes – Unrated and Ranked competitive. Over the course of time, two more game modes were added to the competitive shooter including Spike Rush and Deathmatch, the latter of which wasn’t incorporated into the game until recently.

However, it looks like some good news might await the players, as data miners have revealed leaks which suggest that Valorant may soon be welcoming three new game modes to it, one of which is presumed to be a battle royale.

The three new game modes are codenamed “Alt5”, “Alt6” and “SiteRush”. While no information could be gained on the first, the second game mode is what calls for attention.

The “Alt6” game mode features multiple orbs similar to Spike Rush and on top of that, has extra weapon-specific orbs like the “Operator Orb”, ultimate orbs for Raze and Jett, and a small health orb which heals the player by a margin.

All these orbs strongly point towards the second game mode is a battle royale, unless Riot is planning to come up with something out of the ordinary. Over the last couple of years, battle royale games have gained immense traction among players worldwide. Popular battle royale games like Fortnite and PUBG have defined an era in video gaming, and even Valorant’s primary rival, CSGO, boasts a battle royale mode known as “Danger Zone”.

The last game mode among the leaks is the “SiteRush” mode. Valorant Leaks on Twitter has defined the objective of this mode as “rush and plant the bomb.” It can be assumed to be similar to the “Execute” game mode which can be found in the community servers of CSGO. According to the leak, this mode is currently being tested.

Riot hasn’t confirmed these leaks, and neither are the exact dates of the release of these game modes transparent as of yet. Are you interested in the Valorant Battle Royale mode? Let us know in the comment section below.

Also Read: Getting Error Code 0 in Valorant? Here is the fix!

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