Current League Of Legends World Champions FunPlus Phoenix now aim to extend their dominance in Valorant as they have officially signed a team for the same which will feature five players from the European region. This roster will be anchored by former CS:GO veteran Kirill “ANGE1” Karasiow, who did represent Team HellRaisers for the past six months before he was released from team earlier in March.
FPX holding their LoL World Championship trophy after toppling G2 Esports in the grand finale.
Before extending to Valorant, FPX had signed Heroic’s CS:GO roster but the latter acquisition fell apart after it was threatened by the transfer of Patrick “es3tag” Hansen to Astralis.
With this deal, the Asian Oraganization joins the rest across the globe which do include Cloud9, T1, TSM and G2 Esports who have invested in forming a lineup for their Valorant Division. FPX will go head to head against G2 Esports in their second match at the Allied Esports Odyssey, a part of the Ignition series event where the French Organization will look to seek vengeance from their Defeat at the LOL World Championship.
The Valorant division of FPX now fields these 5 players :
Even before the official release of Mediatonic’s Fall Guys, it had managed to win the hearts of millions of gamers worldwide. The unique take of Fall Guys on the “battle royale” genre helped it garner the attention of popular streamers ever since the closed beta stage of the game.
In this “massively multiplayer party game”, 60 players are matched against each other in a TV show where they have to compete in races, obstacle courses, football and various other game modes till only one victor remains. Unlike regular battle royales, this game involves no weapons whatsoever. Players have to rely solely on their movement, skills, wits and a little bit of luck to be able to outplay their opponents and take the victory crown.
Even during its closed beta stage, this game was already spiking steadily through the Twitch charts in terms of viewership. Currently, this casual battle royale has almost cemented its place over hardcore competitive titles like Riot’s VALORANT, or Valve’s CS:GO. It has also taken the throne of the most viewed game on Twitch from Fortnite, another battle royale by Epic Games.
For one GLORIOUS second we did it.
We were on top of the world.
We looked up and saw only people chatting. Just chatting, they were.
— Fall Guys – Creative Construction (@FallGuysGame) July 24, 2020
Over the past few weeks, the game has been picked up by several popular streamers like xQc, imaqtpie, Lazarbeam and moistcr1tikal, who have been regularly seen streaming the game on their Twitch channels, further increasing the popularity of Fall Guys.
While there may not be an esport scene developing around this game, most streamers have described this game as a “fun” game to play. Priced at just around $7, Fall Guys is the perfect game to casually play with a group of friends to have some fun without having to worry about any competitive aspects.
Last October, Shroud left Twitch and signed a deal with Mixer for $10 million. It was indeed a huge and controversial deal. Shroud lost almost 85% of his audience due to this move. However, in July 2020, Facebook Gaming acquired Mixer and all the operations of Mixer got closed. Basically, Shroud’s contract ended prematurely this July due to the acquisition.
Now the Esports Star Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek is coming back on Twitch and Yes! it’s an exclusive deal. Shroud has already posted a tweet saying, “I’m coming home.”
Shroud also said, “I am so excited to be able to announce my return to Twitch and more importantly get back to streaming. Twitch is where I was able to first turn my passion for streaming into a successful career — and it is all due to my incredible and loyal fanbase. As I was exploring options, I realized that there was no better place than Twitch to engage with the best and most loyal gaming community worldwide. I am also excited to relaunch my channel with a new look and logo that I know my fans will love.”
Esports Star Ninja who earned almost $30 million from Mixer, also started streaming on Twitch and YouTube both since Mixer’s shutdown. Shroud’s 7.1 million Twitch fans are very happy to see Shroud on-board. His first stream will start from tomorrow at 11 AM PST.
Shroud’s fans are eagerly waiting for his iconic live-stream on Twitch. Are you waiting for his first stream after this comeback? Let us know in the comment section below.
StarLadder Berlin Major 2019 was the last CSGO Major Championship till now. Everyone knows what happened after that. The COVID-19 pandemic started and strict-lockdown started in almost every country in the world. This year’s first Major was decided to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil within the month of May. However, because of the pandemic, ESL announced that the May 2020 CSGO Major in Rio de Janeiro had been rescheduled to 19-22 November.
According to ESL, the May Major’s prize pool will be added to the November Major. Therefore, the November Rio Major will have a $2,000,000 prize pool. Moreover, all the tickets purchased for the May Major will remain valid for the November Major.
Although ESL was hoping that all the teams will at least play in the empty arena, this is not likely going to happen because Brazil has the 2nd highest number of COVID-19 cases and there are ongoing travel restrictions all over the world. Even, ESL has announced that the ESL One Cologne 2020 will also be an online event. The ESL One Cologne 2020 North America and Europe both will start online from 18th August.
Valve introduced Regional Major Ranking or RMR in the month of April as a completely new qualification system for the November Major as the May Major had to be canceled. That’s why all the teams are now changing their teams and buying new players to get prepared for the RMR tournament that will select the Rio Major participants.
Today we are outlining how teams will qualify for the November Rio Major. To ensure that the Rio Major features the top teams in the world, we will require that current Legends and Challengers demonstrate that they are still in top form. More here: https://t.co/waoiarL0e1
ESL declared that they are continuously communicating authorities in Rio for the November Major, however, they can’t really say anything yet. In an interview, Christian Lenz, the manager of BIG, said that there won’t be any Rio Major. Numerous fans are also requesting to move the upcoming Major Championship from Brazil.
At that moment, it is really hard to assume if there will be a Major this year or not. This year is not getting tough only for CSGO fans, but also for the teams and organizers. With the rising number of COVID-19 will Brazil be able to host the CSGO Major 2020? Is it going to be the same as the previous Majors? What do you think? Let us know in the comment section below.
The 22-year-old will now fill in the void which was previously left by Aurimas “Bymas” Pipiras, who trialled with FaZe Clan’s roster for a couple of tournaments. Nearly a week back, a report from cybersport.pl did start to surface about the same which was later confirmed partly by Mousesports who signed Bymas as their sixth player for their roster and a developmental player.
Kjaerbye will now represent the European side from now hence in a bid to help the same achieve new heights, the likes of which Markus had been in search since he stepped down from the Danish Organization North’s starting roster. Under North, Kjaerbye along with his troops helped their side to win all the three DreamHack tournaments including two Open tours at Valencia and France followed by the Masters event held in Stockholm, Sweden prior to the start of the FACEIT Major 2018 in London. He averaged with a rating of 1.09 at North before joining Nikola “Niko” Kovač’s side.
Kjaerbye is all set to debut for FaZe at the ESL One Cologne 2020 Europe where the Europeans will lock horns with Team Heroic on 19th of this month.
PUBG Mobile World League ended after a splendid month of action-packed matches and some iconic gameplays that are forever etched in the history of competitive PUBG Mobile. Bigetron RA were crowned winners of Eastern division and Futbolist emerged victorious in the West. Bigetron won a total of $1,55,000 from this tournament and Futbolist won a total of $1,16,500.
The reign of utter domination of Bigetron RA is over as many teams challenged them and Orange Rock came very close to steal away their victory. After a long month of hundreds of matches, here are a few key takeaways from this tournament:
Bigetron RA: The period of domination ends here?
Throughout the journey of a total of 109 matches played in this tournament, there were several times when Bigetron RA just could not perform with their complete potential. There was another reason to this lacking performance, other teams in the Eastern region have grinded so far that they all compete with equal morale. This is such a huge change from last global event where Bigetron were untouched at the top leading 100 points and now they had to battle it out with Orange Rock till the very end.
There was a period when Bigetron was ranked in the bottom four in League Play and could have missed the Super Weekends stage where their presence mattered the most. They made such a huge comeback on the next day and top the tables. This was a big jump from 19th spot to 1st spot in mere four games and the statistics speak for themselves. They have been one of the most consistent teams in PMWL East and always managed to retain the top spot in the end.
Bigetron RA are the monsters and their consistency in winning the PUBG Mobile major titles is unmatched by any other team in the world. According to Liquipedia, Bigetron has won almost every Major title that they played in 2020, coming runner ups in a couple of tournaments. They are the reigning global champions after winning two world championships back to back. From their debut in PUBG Mobile’s first international tournament PMSC 2018, they have absolutely dominated the PUBG Mobile competitive scenario and are one of the finest teams in the world.
If PMWL East results and PMCO Fall Global Finals are compared, it is clearly visible that Bigetron RA do not own the top spot with a huge gap now and always some team is ready to challenge them. The MVP title has been snatched away from Bigetron as bunch of players have claimed the titles now, including the players from BTR.
Bigetron still stand tall in the overall statistics of PMWL East. Bigetron has managed to earn The top fragger, headshot master, grenade master and combat medic title at the end of this series and their consistency remains unmatched in this tournament.
Although Bigetron RA hold the titles right now, their reign of domination is slowly falling down and in next global event, some other team may hold the trophy and become next world champions.
Flourishing Indian Region
India was tagged as the region which could not compete when it comes to the international level. The Indian teams that so far competed with the world on the international stage had no major impact in these tournaments. TSM-Entity, former Entity Gaming, ranked fifth in PMCO Fall Split Global Finals 2019 and that was the highest delivered performance by any Indian team where Bigetron RA was leading the scoreboards with 100 points gap as compared to the runner ups.
The tag was removed by Orange Rock with their godly performance in the PMWL East. They competed with the same Bigetron RA in a cut-throat battle and made it clear to the entire world that India is a region where future champions are getting forged. Teams like Celtz who were just another underdog squad at the start of 2020 are the winners of PMPL SA and made it to the global stage and more such players are grinding their way to the top in Indian PUBG Mobile Esports Community.
Orange Rock with their newest additions Gill and Scout entered in a formidable form in the very last day of grand finale. Gill faced his own share of struggles and finally got the chance to showcase his full potential from his new organization. Gill ranked second in the finals kill leaders with 36 kills and his transfer to OR from GodL has been fruitful for him and his squad as well. TSM-Entity and Jonathan fired up from the second weekend and Jonathan, arguably the best talent from India, was leading the kill boards for two consecutive weeks. He also ranked second in overall kill leaderboards of the season and missed the top spot by just one kill. This showcases his impact on the battlefield.
The so-called gap between SEA and SA region is not visible and it is clear that the next contenders to the global throne can easily be one of the veteran teams or a new roster from India.
Western Division: Drama and competition
Futbolist won PMWL: West division and took home a prize money of $1,00,000. Solkay from the Loops won the “Most popular Player” award along with a MVP award of the entire series and a reward of $10,000. Futbolist had a very consistent and incredible performance throughout the League Play stages. They were consistent in the first two weeks but lacked in the last week. Loops Esports was another team that was perfect in terms of consistency. They ascended from 3rd to first over three weeks grabbed a total of over 500 points in the process. They were the runner ups of western edition but their overall winning amount crossed $1,00,000 because of their League Play ranking.
Cloud9 had a very unfortunate run in this tournament, they entered this tournament as a juggernaut team and ranked the score boards for two consecutive weeks but a catastrophic weekday and they could not qualify for the Super Weekends in the final week. They had an average of above 200 points per week and would have easily won this intermediate stage if they performed in a similar manner. Cloud9 ranked fourth in the final overall standings but their lack of performance was justified as the team had to replace a player after their former player Sixless was kicked from the organization over his unprofessional behavior and the same player was recently banned from PUBG Mobile Esports till the end of 2020.
West region and its controversial drama does not stop here. Loops Esports and Team Queso were alleged of teaming up and Loops had to face a punishment for their behavior as the official PUBG Mobile Esports decided to deduct their points from second week’s Super Weekend.
There was another big problem where teams had to play with a risk of competing in the higher ping as the teams could not be relocated in time due to rising threats of Pandemic at the time. Western region had its own share of issues,hurdles and controversies but it did not falter the competitive spirit in this tournament and it was successful at the end.
BOX Gaming and U LevelUP are the teams to look out for
credits: U Level UP
BOX Gaming is the Vietnamese powerhouse that entered this tournament as a new team. They topped their regional finals and got a slot in World League and they made an impact that could not be ignored. BOX experimented in the opening weekend and from there, they started a Cinderella run till the grand finale. They strategic counters towards other teams were wonderful to watch. They always managed to end up on a position that was not much congested and then started to stack up kills till the end of the map.
Their kill count was very high if they managed to set up their “BOX Fort”. This term was invented by casters because whenever BOX Gaming secured a compound for themselves, nobody could even get close to it because of the crossfire setup. Their consistency got roughed up with time and they lacked to perform in the Grand Finals. They did manage to end up in fourth spot in the finals and Break from their team was the Eastern League MVP. They earned a total sum of $20,000 from this tournament, including the title reward. BOX Gaming was a relatively new team and they take home a plethora of experience and when they return back, they are bound to rise up.
U Level UP from Taiwan matched the performance that was expected from the region. They had a very bad run in the first week of League Play but since they qualified for the Super Weekends of Week Two, they started with a slow pace and heated up the things in Grand Finale. U Level UP did not appear in the first week’s super weekend but after the initial hurdles, they were a threat to a lot of teams.
U Level UP and their run in this finale has been a surprise for many, as they rank from 16th spot in League stages to the Top 5 in grand finale. They experienced the foreign stage for the first time but did not disappoint their fans cheering for them.
U Level UP and BOX Gaming are bound for greatness once they reappear in the global stages with these new experiences and a more enhanced performance is expected from them in upcoming tournaments.
The future of PUBG Mobile Esports
PUBG Mobile concludes its first edition of World League after overcoming lots of difficulties in the process. The tournament was meant to be the biggest tournament so far and conducted in offline manner in a one-of-a-kind PUBG Mobile studio in Katowice, Poland. After the pandemic started, there was a huge problem in gathering so any players from around the world under the same roof and many regions had to conclude their PMPL stages.
A big decision came through by the esports team and they decided to move the tournament to online mode and split it into two parts, trying to give a fair experience for all the players at the same time. They managed to do so and this tournament was successfully concluded. The coming future plans were announced on the final day where regional PMPL will begin soon and a big announcement is yet to come.
Considering the amount of efforts the team put up to conduct this promised tournament and not just postponing it is commendable. After the impact of pandemic reduces, the ecosystem of PUBG Mobile Esports will grow and reach new heights. The level of competition is already rising and some new updates such Erangel 2.0, 90FPS mode and more will flourish the game to the greater extent.
The viewership of PUBG Mobile World League across all the stream langauges combined managed to cross a mark of 1 Million concurrent viewers for the first time and it enters the 1M watching club of Arena of Valour in Mobile Esports.
The financial side of this ecosystem is also rising as the prize pools are increasing and new sponsors are coming up which will help the Esports team to maintain their production quality and a bright future is ahead for the teams, casters and everybody involved in PUBG Mobile Esports ecosystem.
Harpreet Singh “Ronak” Janjuha has left the PUBG Mobile roster of Team Fnatic. Ronak uploaded a statement on Instagram regarding this matter and Fnatic has officially announced his departure from the team.
Ronak is one of the star players of Indian PUBG Mobile community who made his debut in the competitive PUBG Mobile with Team Soul. He reached the pinnacle of stardom after the team won PMIS 2019 and PMCO: Spring Split India and represented India in Germany for grand finals.
After the finals, team had decided their fan favourite player Mortal would take a break from competitive, and Scout would replace him in the roster. This shuffle was not welcomed by the community and after a heated controversial fight, they team parted ways and formed Team XSpark.
XSpark had three big names, Owais, Ronak and Scout together, joined by a veteran player Paritosh. This team started to perform wonders and quickly was picked up by Fnatic in 2019. This was the first time for such a big international organisation to come in India and pick a PUBG Mobile roster.
After a successful start, the way ahead full of surprises for the team as they failed to win any tournament except PMAS. They also had internal disputes and clashes for a long time but managed to rank second in PMIS 2020.
Ronak had his own share of ups and downs in this journey. He broke down once and a big public banter between him and 8bit Thug happened over breaking Team Soul. They did patch things up the next day, but this was a heated session of argument over various internal matters that was discussed publicly.
Ronak also had to take a break from streaming due to recent hate in the community and the toxicity affected his performance in tournaments. He returned back to streaming soon but it seems like the problems were unsolved. He even opted for playing with team GodLike for PMIS qualifications and did not play with in the active roster.
Ronak has finally annouced his departure and may soon return to the game with a new team or under new organization.
24-year-old professional CSGO player Nicholas “nitr0” Cannella is reportedly making a switch to Riot’s competitive shooter VALORANT. The report which was first published by ESPN’s Tyler Erzberger states that multiple North American pro teams have already reached out to nitr0 to add him to their rosters.
As I reported on the @ESPN_Esports@PlayVALORANT Power Rankings show: former Team Liquid in-game leader Nitro is looking to make the transition to VALORANT as a pro player and multiple teams have reached out to make a transfer from Team Liquid happen
Tyler has called this to be the “biggest transfer yet from Counter-Strike to VALORANT.”
Nitro is an awesome guy to chat with, I interviewed him at BLAST Los Angeles in 2019. He's still relatively young at 24 and is less than a year removed from leading TL to the IEM Grand Slam
This is the biggest transfer yet from Counter-Strike to VALORANT
Nitr0 has been playing in Team Liquid for over five years, helping the team to land first-place finishes in many S-tier tournaments like the Intel Extreme Masters XIV – Chicago or the ESL One Cologne: 2019. He had been the team’s in-game leader for a long time before he was replaced by 19-year-old rifler Michael “Grim” Wincer on August 4, 2020.
With more and more popular CSGO pros making a switch to VALORANT, it’s evident how big of an impact Riot’s new tactical shooter has laid on the professional esports scene. The finals of the latest Ignition Series tournament – FaZe Clan Invitational – rocked a viewer count of over 180,000 where TSM took down Sentinels 3-2 in what is believed to be one of the most exciting finals yet.
Aurimas “Bymas” Pipiras has been signed by the European team Mousesports as their Sixth player for their CS:GO roster and as a “Development player” after the organization decided to broaden their roster and ignite their philosophy of developing young players.
After rising to the dominance in FACEIT Pro League (FPL) where he caught the eye of Nikola “NiKo” Kovač, FaZe decided to replace Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer with this 16yo Prodigy where the latter decided to step down from the roster due to lack of motivation. Till now Aurimas did represent the European based organization in a plethora of tournaments, helping his team to finish third at DreamHack Masters Spring and BLAST Premier Spring Europe Finals but failed to turn the tides against his opponents at the cs_summit 6, the second RMR (Regional Major Ranking) event of the European region where FaZe succumbed to an 11th place finish.
Soon later around the end of the player break, reports started to surface where FaZe considered ending this 16yo’s trial in order to bring in Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye who had been a free agent since July. With Bymas’s arrival at Mousesports, a breakthrough regarding the former news has been confirmed whereas Kjaerbye’s status still floats in the air.
DreamHack on their website have revealed about their future plans where they have postponed their future events until the end of the year due to the ongoing global Pandemic (COVID-19).
Amidst of the ongoing global health crisis, Swedish Tournament Organizer DreamHack released a statement where they have kept before the community the fate of their future events. In May, DreamHack had decided to move their three “Open events” to an online regional format which were previously scheduled to be held on LAN in Valencia, Montreal and Hyderabad.
But as of now,these plans are being followed by a complete postponement where the following DreamHack stops at Rotterdam, Hyderabad, Atlanta, Madrid along with DreamHack Winter bear some feasible dates in 2021. With DreamHack Montreal and the Summer event too been postponed until 2021, their complete schedules for the next year are set to be revealed by the end of the year.
Unfortunately we are postponing the remaining 2020 DreamHack festivals.
DreamHack Rotterdam, Hyderabad, Atlanta, Winter, and Madrid will all be postponed until 2021.
“The goal for all of us at DreamHack is to provide great experiences at our events, which thrive by bringing communities together for these shared and beloved festival weekends all around the globe. This has been a very different year for everyone, but we are fully committed to bringing our festivals back in 2021”. said DreamHack Co-CEO, Marcus Lindmark.
At the moment, DreamHack has successfully transitioned it’s Summer tournament into a Regional Online format where it has been termed as a final chance for the teams from Europe to bag their Regional Major Ranking Points (RMR) in a bid to qualify for the major.
“We have never had to postpone events like this before — but these are extraordinary times, and the safety of our attendees and staff has never been more important than now,” Lindmark added.
The events affected by this announcement are:
DreamHack Rotterdam — originally scheduled for October 16-18, 2020
DreamHack Hyderabad — originally scheduled for October 31-November 1, 2020
DreamHack Atlanta — originally scheduled for November 13-15, 2020
DreamHack Winter — originally scheduled for November 27-29, 2020
DreamHack Madrid — originally scheduled for December 11-13, 2020
