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Smooya announces free agency

Bharat Kotwani
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Smooya announces free agency

The 20yo English AWPer was released from his contract at Chaos after the latter lost his place in the roster due to the Coronavirus Pandemic which saw his interview with the US embassy canceled and postponed due to the ongoing Coronavirus Pandemic. Earlier, Smooya had travelled back to his hometown in the United Kingdom as his stay in USA did engage in some conflicts with some ESTA guidelines.

Since then Smooya had been a free agent until he and Snappi who had been benched by Heroic were linked to TIGER, a Mongolian Esports team lead by former Grayhound player Erdenetsogt “erkaSt” Gantulga . But things still couldn’t get better for Owen as TIGER did scrap their roster revamp plans which could have resulted in loosing half of their Regional Major Rankings as per the rules and regulations set by ESL for their Road to Rio tournament.

Smooya had previously played for Renegades (now 100 Thieves) as well where he replaced Sean “Gratisfaction” Kaiwai on the roster after the latter was forced to miss a plethora of matches due to some VISA Issues. With an average rating of 1.32 at Chaos, he is now looking forward to unleash his true potential for yet another time with his choices now widened to join a team from the EU region as well.

CSGO: Astralis to miss cs_summit EU

Kanishka Thakur
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CSGO: Astralis to miss cs_summit EU

Astralis have taken a decision to not participate in the upcoming second European Regional Major Ranking (RMR) tournament that is hosted by Beyond the Summit later this month. In a statement provided to 1pv.fr from Kasper Hvidt, Sports Director at Astralis, he said that “this decision was made due to our general planning around the team and the way we would be punished for substituting players.”

Photo: BLAST

With the addition of two new players in the Astralis squad Jakob ‘JUGi’ Hansen and Marco ‘Snappi’ Pfeiffer the team has not been performing quite well and have only won a single matchup in their previous 5 games. The departure of the two players Lukas “gla1ve” Rossander and Andreas “Xyp9x” Højsleth from Astralis have left them in such a place where if they would have to participate in the tournament it would cost them to lose 40% of their points as a result of the two changes. This penalty could eventually drop to 20% if they use the coach’s rule which is still regularly used to bypass the rules.

Although, Astralis are currently leading the European rankings with a 720 point lead and they will still be in the top part of the ranking even if they avoid playing this tournament and could take their time in order to build a stable lineup in order to play the upcoming tournaments.

Ninja, Shroud Support Black Lives Matter Protest, Slam Pres. Trump

Lauren Rasmussen
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Ninja, Shroud Support Black Lives Matter Protest, Slam Pres. Trump

The gruesome death of George Floyd has stirred up a historic protest against the racist culture throughout the world. The unwanted & unprecedented discrimination against the people of color have arisen to mass protest all across America, and gradually around the world.

Two of the most famous esports personalities of our time have vocalized their support towards the Black Lives Matter movement. Whereas, Ninja went a step ahead and slammed the Trump administration for doing little to control the situation.

Micheal ‘shroud’ Grzesiek extended his support to the movement on Twitter, and he shared his disagreement with people being treated differently because of their skin color. Shroud said he supports the initiative because it stands for equality, justice, and compassion. The tweet garnered around 32,000 likes and a couple of thousands of retweets.

Further, Shroud also acknowledged that he belonged to the ‘white privilege class’ and would never completely understand the pain of the racial abuses.

Ninja slams the Trump administration

Richard Tyler Blevis Jr., who’s famously known around the world as Ninja, went a step ahead in the support of this march. He asked people not to get ‘distracted by the looters’ and see the real brutality which is being supported and conducted by the Police forces.

He also went ahead and called out Trump for deploying military forces across the United States of America to take control of the situation.

Trevis says “instead of adressing to the protesters, he threatens to bring in the military,” referring to President Trumps call for Military action against the looters.

The gaming fraternity, most of them developers and publishers have come out in support of the movement. Electronic Arts, Sony Entertainment and several other organizations have been extremely vocal about the cause on their social media.

At a time when people are locked in their homes following strict quarantine regulations around the world, an incident of racism was never anticipated.

MIBR Fines Fer For Racial Slur On Africans In CSGO Stream

Md. Naseer Fuad Khan
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MIBR Fines Fer For Racial Slur On Africans In CSGO Stream

In the middle of what appears to be one of the strongest movements in support of the people of color, South American roster MIBR finds itself in unprecedented controversy. MIBR has now apologized on their Twitter handle and subsequently fined Fer for his racist remarks.

Fernando ‘Fer’ Alvarenga is at the center of a backlash on one of his racist comments made during his CSGO stream recently. Fer currently plays for CSGO roster of the Brazilian esports organization Made in Brazil, MIBR.

The American continent is stirred up, encouraging the rest of the world to follow suit in speaking against racism against African Americans. The death of George Floyd has upstreamed one of the largest public outrage and parade in American history. However, not everyone is as sensitive as they should be, one of South America’s renowned CSGO pro is seen hurling racial slurs against Africans in one of his recent streams.

Fer’s Outrageous Comments

As someone on the chat makes a remark about how “Fer is touching is hair very often,” he responds with an obnoxious comment. Fer is heard saying “Stop touching my hair? Are you sad because your hair is hard and bad? My hair is good. It is quite smooth, look how good this s**t is.“ In most of the South American countries, bad hair is in reference to the hard hairs of African descent.

Unsurprisingly, people continue on the chat to call out the Brazilian CSGO pro to which, he responds “Why racist? Is everything racism to you guys? Take this,” the MIBR player said as he hand-gestured the middle finger. Fer went on to taunt people calling him racist. “Oh, you are a racist, you are a homophobe! Man, go take in the a**! Go take it in the a** you son of a b***h,” he said, making silly gestures and voices.

MIBR’s Apology & Stand

Not leaving any margins for error, MIBR quickly responded on their Twitter handle about the misappropriate behavior of their CSGO star and fined him. The organization went ahead and apologized to their fan following as well, after his remarks didn’t go well with the community.

MIBR’s statement in Portugese which was translated by the Redditor, parts of which suggests: “Fer, one of our players, made a mistake. He was wrong. He made comments in his stream that do not reflect our values ​​and, we believe, that also do not reflect his values,” the translation read.

 “I apologize if I somehow gave an impression of racism in my stream.”

Fernando too apologized for his unwanted and bizarre comments made on stream. He took to Twitter regretting his behavior on the Stream and calling out people using racial slurs.

LoL ‘icon’ Uzi announces retirement due to poor health

Anuj Rautela
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LoL ‘icon’ Uzi announces retirement due to poor health

Jian ‘Uzi’ Zi-Hao, one of the most popular AD carry players has finally decided to hang up the mouse and keyboard. With a professional esports career spanning over eight years, Royal Never Give Up’s star player has decided to call it quit amid ongoing injuries.

Uzi played 683 games since his debut in the League of Legends competitive scene with Royal Club in 2012. The golden boy of Chinese League of Legends has won Mid Seasonal Invitations (MSI) once and LPL titles twice. Uzi has been to World Championships six times, even though he & his team was unsuccessful in winning the Summoner’s Cup, they managed to secure runner-up position twice in 2013 & 2014 respectively.

Royal Never Give Up announced the same on their official Twitter handle. In their statements, they mentioned that,

Due to injuries accumulated over eight years of high intensity training, at the suggestion of medical professionals, Uzi was advised to rest during the 2020 LPL Spring Split. After Spring, a decision was made, and we understood and respected his wishes, and will continue to assist him.

Uzi was regarded as the “heart and soul” of RNG, and was with the team since the original days when it was known as Royal Club. As his career went on, he came out to be the shining light on the team due to his incredible mechanical skills. However, he always fell short of winning titles and MSI 2018 win being the only major international trophy Uzi won in his esports career.

Uzi announced his retirement personally as well with his tweet:

Uzi said, “I would like to thank my fans for their support and company over the years. Thank you for cheering me on silently, encouraging me, and being my strongest supporters over the years.”

Uzi Announces Retirement – Post your Favorite Uzi Memories/Feelings About Uzi in Here
by u/Pretenderrr in leagueoflegends

RNG had the following to say for Uzi:

Even in retirement, Uzi is still an important member of the RNG family. In addition to doing everything we can do to assist him in his future endeavours, we will also be by his side to help him on his journey to injury recovery.

CSGO player count takes a hit after Valorant beta release

Sonu Banerjee
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CSGO player count takes a hit after Valorant beta release

As many had speculated earlier, the closed beta release of VALORANT has indeed taken a toll on the player base of its rival, CSGO. Previous month’s data on Steam Charts show that the player counts of CSGO have taken a sudden detour from the steady increase it was experiencing since several months.

Snapshot via STEAMCHARTS

The numbers reveal that the average player count of the first-person shooter by Valve has dramatically decreased from 857,604 in April to 768,795 in May, a difference of almost 100,000 players and that too, under a month.

While the numbers are quite dramatic, the incident is however, unsurprising. With all the promises that VALORANT had handed out and with all the features it has managed to deliver even before its official release, it was bound to attract a good number of CSGO players to itself.

Two of the prime features which CSGO lacked at but were in high demand among the fans were 128-tick servers and a better anti-cheat engine. VALORANT delivered both of these, gaining the attention of the gaming community worldwide. Besides these, Riot has made sure that their competitive shooter runs on even decade old PCs, further increasing its popularity among gamers who don’t want to invest heavily on a rig.

It goes without saying the closed beta phase of Riot’s shooter was a groundbreaking success in itself, with the game amassing a daily player average of about a whopping 3,000,000 players. CSGO, on the other hand, reaches about a concurrent player peak of 1.2 million players everyday.

Most importantly, it all happened when VALORANT was in its closed beta stage when only a limited number of players had access to the beta key drops. With VALORANT officially launching worldwide on June 2, these numbers can only be expected to increase a lot further.

#BlackLivesMatter protests: Humble Bundle setups Million Dollar Fund For Black Game Developers

Prateek Jain
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#BlackLivesMatter protests: Humble Bundle setups Million Dollar Fund For Black Game Developers

As the protest across America grows, more companies and celebrities are joining the protests and voicing their support across various platforms. The voices of support aren’t limited to only a certain section of the industry, even game publishers and developers are joining the fry and voicing their support for the BLM protests.

Latest to voice their concerns is the Humble Bundle, a digital storefront for video games. In an official announcement on Twitter, Humble Bundle announced that they are setting up a $1 Million Fund especially for Black Developers, to help to fund the launch of their games.

Voicing their concerns about police brutality against the black community and condemning racism, Humble Bundle said:

We stand in solidarity to condemn racism and violence against the Black community. Humble believes in empowering and uniting communities through gaming and will leverage our platform to help achieve racial equity everywhere.

“…….the Humble community has always supported worthwhile causes in times of need so please consider donating to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund or Race Forward.

BlackLivesMatter

Skadoodle joins T1 as a professional Valorant player

Anuj Rautela
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Skadoodle joins T1 as a professional Valorant player

Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham, former Counter-Strike World Champion was picked up by T1 Esports to complete their starting lineup for their very first Valorant team. Skadoodle will join Braxton “Brax” Pierce, Austin “cashies” Roberts, Victor “food” Wong and Keven “AZK” Lariviere on T1’s North American team for Valorant.

Ska brings a championship pedigree to our VALORANT roster on top of an unquenchable competitive drive, What impressed me most about Ska during our conversations was his desire to be on a championship-calibur team and organization.

Joe Marsh, CEO, T1

The trio of AZK, Brax & Ska

Ska has rejoined former Counter-Strike teammates Braz and AZK, the trio that played for Team iBUYPOWER between 2013 and 2015 where they got recognition and made name for themselves as the fastest-rising team in the North American region. However, in August 2015 allegations were made regarding the team’s involvement in a fixed match. They even lost a tournament that year.

As a result, Valve decided to ban AZK and Brax indefinitely from competitive Counter-Strike but Skadoodle was not punished as he declined to share any profit from the incident. Ska would then join Cloud 9’s roster for Counter-Strike: Global Offensive that would later on go to win a major championshipat the ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018.

Nevertheless, Brax and AZK were the first two played that were signed by T1 Esports for their VALORANT roster. During the beta period, the trio of Brax, AZK & Ska participated in several online tournaments and even won multiple titles.

Also Read: Skadoodle Valorant Settings

Academy team in NA & another team in South Korea

T1 has also announced their desire to run an academy team under their starting lineup in North America as well as another professional team that would compete in VALORANT tournaments in the South Korean region.

Silent jumping in CSGO still causes noise

Sonu Banerjee
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Silent jumping in CSGO still causes noise

Silent jumping is a technique in CSGO that has been around for a long time. Although, it wasn’t until recently that this bug received the spotlight from several big CSGO YouTubers and social media forums.

However, contrary to the popular beliefs, silent jumping might not be silent at all, as pro CSGO coach Chet “ImAPet” Singh reveals through a tweet.

Silent jumping is a technique which can be pulled off by crouch-jumping to a height and just before the player lands, the crouch button is released. If done correctly, it minimises the noise produced from the jump and is often used to deny enemies the audio cues while repositioning to a different altitude.

ImAPet mentions that silent jumping in CSGO still causes a small amount of sound. Players may be able to get away with the low noise during most situations, but he claims that in a 1v1 situation where the surrounding noise is minimal, silent jumping may not be a very good idea. The sound from the jump might just be enough to give away the position of the player which can be a critical mistake during a one-on-one situation.

ZooL has elaborated on ImAPet’s statement, testing it out in a custom server and making a video of it while increasing the volume of the sound produced by the ‘silent’ jump to make things clear.

In the attached video, the player is seen jumping on the head of another player and dropping down repeatedly. Each time, the player produces a sound which can be clearly heard in the video.

Pokimane cosplays as Sage to celebrate the release of Valorant

Prateek Jain
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Pokimane cosplays as Sage to celebrate the release of Valorant

One of the most anticipated F2P FPS game, Valroant just went live yesterday. The day 1 response for the game was so overwhelming that the servers running at over-capacity and crashing frequently. AS time went by many of these issues were ironed out and streamers also started logging in.

Photo: Pokimane

Twitch streamer, Imane “Pokimane” Anys for the launch of Valorant cosplayed Sage for her fans while playing the game. Before going live she tweeted about the cosplay and shared pictures of herself in cosplay.

From the black hair to Sage’s robe with black sleeves and a simple plastic light-up ball as the orb, she perfectly cosplayed the agent. 

Pokimane has been playing the game since the closed beta and always described Sage as “overpowered” and basically the best agent right now. Although on the release Sage did receive some tweaking on her Barrier and Healing Orbs abilities to address her ”OP-ness”, Pokimane still went all out with her cosplay and it seems she’s taken a liking to the agent as well.

She remained in the cosplay for the entire 4-hour stream season and fans were absolutely loving it which helped her in remaining the top Valorant streamer for the entire duration.

With the release of the game comes IGNITION: The first Episode including the battle pass, a variety of bug fixes, and ability tweaks. The progression of Beta players will also be reset. Every player starting now will need to unlock all of the agents by grinding game modes for required XP.

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