VALORANT’s closed beta, which was a ground-breaking success is set to conclude today on 28th May. The closed beta phase of Riot’s shooter already saw the implementation of the ranked mode in the game which is set to be refined even further in the official launch which is scheduled for June 2nd.
The official release is also expected to bring a new possible agent along with a new map to the game. But besides those, a report on Polygon also shows that the devs may also be willing to change the name of the top rank of the competitive spectrum in VALORANT, which apparently is also titled ‘Valorant’.
According to the interview, Sean Szopinski – senior designer for VALORANT – admitted that the rank of ‘Valorant’ was indeed confusing for the players. Szopinski said that initially the name ‘Valorant’ seemed like an attractive choice for the peak rank attainable in the game but mentioned that they’re planning to change it on release.
“What could be cooler than climbing the ranks, aspiring to become an elite and heroic Valorant, the personification of the game itself! You guys are right though, it’s a bit confusing. We get it. I get it. We’ll change it for launch,” Szopinski mentioned in the interview.
Currently, the ranks in VALORANT range from Iron to Valorant, with the ranks Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond and Immortal in the middle. It might be a matter of time before the name of the end rank changes to something else.
As Riot mentioned earlier, all the currently obtained ranks in the game by the players will be reset on the official release but some of the unrated MMR will be staying with the aim of providing a better unrated matchmaking experience for the players. However, this won’t have an effect on the ranked MMR where players will have to grind their way back to the top levels.
CSGO has seen a lot of love from Valve recently, and with the upcoming release of their primary rival VALORANT, this trend is sure to continue for a while. The last CSGO update saw Valve fixing grenade inconsistencies in their competitive shooter, and this time they further emphasized on fixing grenades while simultaneously improving rendering for textures for better performance.
Today we're shipping the Warhammer (@WarComTeam) 40,000 Sticker Capsule, featuring 17 unique designs from the 40K universe! We've also added a setting to change your main menu background and a new "killed by C4" killfeed icon. More in today's Blog Post: https://t.co/YK9VD7ffSMpic.twitter.com/bnNxR1vsDL
The first and most notable change for this update is, however, the newest addition to the killfeed family. The killfeed will now display kills done by the C4 in every game mode. This is certain to be a welcome change in the community since previously, players would have to keep checking the scoreboard to decipher who, if anyone, got killed by the C4 at the end of a round.
GAMEPLAY
The killfeed now displays players that are killed by C4 explosions in all game modes.
Players that are frozen by game logic no longer take damage.
Players are less likely to become stuck on mid-air grenades, and are now able to stand up when crouched on top of another player’s decoy grenade.
Grenades are less likely to phase through doors when thrown into nearby players, and have improved collision when bouncing near the ground around player’s feet.
RENDERING
Adjusted sticker shader to reduce mip artifacts on holographic stickers at an angle.
Optimized shadow culling frustum to prevent flickering shadows caused by renderable overflow at ultra-wide aspect ratios such as 21:9.
Optimized texture generation by giving composite textures destined for models that are already rendering higher priority in the generation queue.
Added a trailing cache of composite inputs, designed to optimize composite generation for sequences of similar jobs.
More asynchronous texture requests are allowed per cycle, allowing composites to generate faster on some systems.
Added an experimental graphics setting; ‘Texture Streaming’ in video options. Texture streaming allows the game to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they are needed for rendering, potentially saving a significant amount of video memory. On systems with slower disk access, streaming textures may be momentarily visible.
UI / LOCALIZATION
Added a new Anubis main menu background movie to the game.
Added a way for users to change their main menu background scenery.
Split stickers and patches localization UI tokens to allow for better translations.
Added proper HTML-escaping for custom inventory item names when applying and scraping stickers.
STORE
Added Warhammer 40,000 Sticker Capsule featuring a variety of stickers from the Warhammer 40,000 series
STEAM
Updated Steamworks SDK and Steam libraries to the latest versions released in May 2020.
If the game fails to connect with local Steam Client, then users must update their version of Steam Client by selecting Steam > Check for Steam Client Updates…
The latest grenade fixes include that players will now be less likely to be stopped by mid-air grenades. They’ll also be able to now stand up when crouching on another player’s decoy grenade. The collision of grenades has also been improved, and are less likely to phase through objects when thrown to nearby players.
Next, the update focused on improving rendering in the game, consequently improving performance. Besides sticker shaders and texture generation being optimized, Valve has also made some other miscellaneous changes to improve rendering which can be found in details on their official blog. The most noticeable change is the addition of the new ‘Texture Streaming’ mode to the video settings of CSGO. This mode will enable players to defer loading of high-resolution textures until they’re needed for rendering, which can save video memory and improve performance on slower PCs.
Besides these, other small changes include the addition of a new ‘Warhammer 40000’ sticker capsule, a new Anubis main menu background, and enabled players to change the backgrounds in their main menus.
The new ecosystem of Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Siege as discussed earlier was bought in light at its Invitational held earlier in this year where teams from their respective regions would compete against each other in the same. These regions include Europe, North America, Latin America and Asia-Pacific.
The next chapter of @R6esports in Asia-Pacific, the Asia-Pacific League!
Combining teams from the region into a cohesive ecosystem, the #R6APACL will start on June 23rd.
— Rainbow Six Esports Asia (@R6esportsASIA) May 27, 2020
About the Global structure , all these regions are tethered into a “coherent global program” where teams across the above mentioned four regions would compete against each other in regional and global competitions comprising of 3 Majors and regional leagues in a bid to qualify for the Six Invitational through this unique charted road map. To succeed in this latter plan of Ubisoft, every team’s fate would be determined through a new and in-depth point system which would eventually deal some impacts on the same based upon their performances and standings.
Ubisoft on their website did address the community about their planned and upcoming global structure where 4 best teams would triumph from their respective regions through a Six Major pattern which would then sum up to 16 teams from the four regions qualify for the Pinnacle event to be held in Montreal, Canada.
In addition to the same, more 4 teams would be looking towards an opportunity to qualify for the Global event through their regional qualifiers hence making the Six Invitational a 20-Team event.
With the South Asia region now been backed by Ubisoft under the South Division, teams from the former are thrilled and pumped up to showcase their efforts in a bid to culminate their passion into something they have already been looking forward to.
The South Division will feature two independent sub regions comprising of South Asia and Oceania. Both will individually operate their own tournaments leading to a single, common “South-only playoff” prior to each Major Qualifier. The South Asia Division now includes: India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan followed by the Oceania division featuring Australia, New Zealand, Melanesia, Micronesia and Polynesia.
At the end of each stage, the top teams from each Division will face each other in the Asia-Pacific Playoff, in a bid to represent the Asia-Pacific region at the upcoming Six Major.
In the South Division, we will now witness top teams from their respective regions progress through a format called the “Nationals”. The Oceanic nationals would be featuring 8 teams competing in a round-robin format per stage. At the end of each stage, top 3 teams would qualify for the South Division. This would be run in parallel with the South Asia Division where “4 independent online Open Qualifiers” would feature 2 best teams from each qualifier compete in 8 teams closed qualifier event. These 8 teams would then compete in a bid to win the South Asia Nationals through a double-elimination format. In the due course, the upper bracket winner would be handed a 1-Map advantage in the finals.
About the South Division playoffs:
Upon the determination of teams from the South Division nationals, Playoffs for the same would begin through an offline event witnessing the 4 teams from the South Division to compete in a double-elimination bracket
The Oceanic Nationals winner
The South Asia Nationals winner
The 2nd Place of the Oceanic Nationals
The 3rd Place of the Oceanic Nationals
The top two reigning teams from the double elimination bracket will progress to the Asia-Pacific League Playoffs.
At the end of the event, top two teams from the South Division Playoffs would advance to the APAC League playoffs where they would join 6 teams progressing through a plethora of events from the North Division about which the details can be found here.
Action for the APAC region kicks off on 23rd of June. You can catch the live action of the North Division here while as of now no Broadcast link has been provided for the South. Along with Twitch, you can also resort to their YouTube channel as well.
Today in an official blog post, Blizzard announced that the annual BlizzCon event for this year, BlizzCon 2020 will be canceled due to growing concern about the COVID-19 pandemic. The event is usually held in the 1st week of November every year at the Anaheim Convention Center in California, USA.
In April Blizzard released a statement regarding the BlizzCon 2020 situation, saying it was concerned about the viability of hosting the event shortly following the declaration of a state of emergency in the U.S.
Several weeks ago, I shared an update about our uncertainty around holding BlizzCon this year. Since then, a lot has changed . . . and a lot also hasn’t changed. During this time, we’ve had many discussions about what holding a convention could look like in light of all the health and safety considerations we’d want to make. We’ve also talked about different paths we could take, and how each one could be complicated by fluctuations in national and local health guidelines in the months ahead. Ultimately, after considering our options, we’ve come to the very difficult decision to not have BlizzCon this year.
Saralyn Smith, Executive Producer, Blizzcon
Despite the cancelation of the event, Blizzard is looking at ways to host the event online in some limited way, most likely sometime early next year.
We’re talking about how we might be able to channel the BlizzCon spirit and connect with you in some way online, far less impacted by the state of health and safety protocols for mass in-person gatherings. We’d want to do this as soon as we could, but given that this is new-ish territory and the different factors involved, it will most likely be sometime early next year.
SARALYN SMITH, EXECUTIVE PRODUCER, BLIZZCON
BlizzCon 2020 is just one of many other video game events that have been canceled this year as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. Events like QuakeCon, Gamescom, Tokyo Game Show, and biggest gaming event E3 were all canceled back in early March.
Former member of Lenovo’s seniors CS:GO team, Silver Snipers, Abbe “BirDie” Borg, 78-years-old is the oldest esport champion in the world. He secured the championship title in the Seniors CS:GO tournament at DreamHack Summer 2019 by winning against Finland, USA & Germany.
Before his professional esports career, Abbe was a professional artist. Abbe told ONE Esports that,
“I make art pieces and sculpture out of paper and napkins while creating rose paintings from brass and copper-clad sheets. I leaned more towards paper than metal over the last two decades because I could always grab a napkin from somewhere and instantly make a paper flower or ballerina to brighten up somebody’s world around them. It kept my hands occupied and agile while creating beautiful ephemeral art given to random people around me to brighten their day. Seeing their smile was always priceless.”
Abbe has also created a piece about his favourite Swedish tradition, the “St. Lucia Dance” which happens once every year on December 13 to commemorate the life of Saint Lucia. Abbe said, “Art is something that speaks to me on a deeply personal level. Some people may see a blank paper canvas but I make an art piece out of it. Inspiration is all around us and one thought can be made into a new sculpture or a new art piece.”
Abbe entered the esports scene in 2016 when he was picked by Lenovo along with several other senior Swedish citizens to form a CSGO team called the Silver Snipers. They first competed in DreamHack Winter 2017 where they eventually lost but won hearts of many. Talking about his training, Abbe said, “I underwent training with the team and spent hours learning about playing CS:GO. I had to learn a lot of new things and develop new skills which were exciting. The whole experience was great and I had loads of fun since the start of this journey.”
Talking about how his name was originated, Abbe said, “I remember that when my son was still young, we went to the supermarket and we got separated. I did the bird whistle as I was looking for him. My son followed the sound and found me. It was a good story that I like to recall. To my son, it’s an endearing way of finding his father and to me, it was an effective way to let him find me so it stuck with me and my team members began calling me Birdie.”
After winning DreamHack last year, Abbe announced his retirement from the Silver Snipers. Looking back at his professional gaming career Abbe said, “My time with Silver Snipers was great and I’ll cherish it greatly. Through my whole experience with the team, I have formed my advocacy in calling for my fellow grandparents and senior citizens to try and play esports. Take it from me — at the age of 78 years, I was able to achieve my goals and became a world champion. It was unexpected but a great feat for someone my age. Playing esports has a lot of benefits and it also fosters connections between generations.”
“Bagging the championship with Silver Snipers is the best achievement especially as we became the proof that it is never too late to try new things and succeed in it. I remember the feeling I had when we first came out to the arena to begin the competition — I was nervous but excited at the same time. I loved how the crowd cheered for both teams and I saw that the crowd was all younger people, so much younger than our team. They cheered and applauded for us when we won.”
“There were five randomly chosen players from the audience that we faced as a team. The chosen players were all under the age of 25. I was nervous but in the end, we won. The crowd cheered so loud, it was awesome.”
Abbe also talked about the popularity of the team in the city and how the team spent their free time clicking photos with their fans. He said,
“Paris has always been my favourite city and being back there reminded me of when I used to travel there with my son and we just did all the museums and art galleries. Getting there made a big impression on me as we were frequently grabbed for photo shoots by young gamers and fans. The audience was exuberant meeting us gray gamers.”
Talking about playing games for a living, Abbe said,
“I may have started a bit older than most gamers but I am certain that my younger self would have fun and would have loved playing esports for a living or as a hobby.”
After his retirement, Abbe has started streaming CS:GO under the name DieHardBirdie on Twitch. He tries other games as well.
“I want to learn how to play Minecraft, and maybe I can play this game with my granddaughter. I always wanted to be able to play games with both my children and grandchildren and now I am teaching my son to play the game and he is in his 50s. Rocket League is also a good game that I want to try and maybe I can try it out with my granddaughter teaching me. She recently taught me Team Fortress 2. Now that’s three generations of my family coming together and bonding while playing video games.”
Talking about the family, Abbe said, “Maybe it is good that I started so late in life and only spend four hours a day gaming versus the younger generation who can spend far many more hours a day. I think it’s important to realize that we need to have balance in our life. Video gaming and live streaming more than 4 hours a day would take away from my quality of life if most of that time is not spent with my wife, kids, grandkids, and family.”
Ubisoft is planning to make a movie based on BirDie’s esports career and the Silver Snipers’ story. To this Abbe replied by stating that, “I heard about this news. I believe (and I hope) that this movie will bring inspiration to everyone, both for the older and younger generation. I think that having a movie about our story would give a fresh perspective on the state of esports and it may show how the division for older players in the esports scene is underrated.” And as for who should play his role in the movie, he said, “Honestly, I am fine with any actor around my age. I think the people making the film would do great in selecting the cast for the film.”
In the end, Abbe believes triumph follows anyone who is diligent and committed.
“Just be patient and try your best. Age does not guarantee any kind of success if one does not work hard to achieve their goals. Success is always sweeter when you work hard and persevere.”
The Finnish open qualifier for Red Bull Flick was plagued with a couple of hackers who apparently won the event at first. Red Bull Flick is a 2vs2 tournament with €20,000 on the line. The star players of ENCE Esports – Aleksi “allu” Jalli and Elias “Jamppi” Olkkonen also encountered the duo of cheaters and eventually lost 3-1 in the showmatch.
The hackers’ nicknames are woldes and jezay, while they played under ‘boss osuja’ banner. One of them apparently has a bunch of VAC banned accounts as well. In the following video, it is clearly evident that both of them were tracing enemies through the surfaces and pre-firing at unusual angles.
The Finnish open qualifiers had lots of teams and hackers reaching all the way through the finale is indeed a cause of concern for tournament organizers. On May 24, Red Bull claimed that they had received “community feedback on suspected hackers” and said that FACEIT was investigating the players and their gameplay. They further claimed that if the players have used cheats, it will be separately reported later.
The whole event was played out on FACEIT, a well-known matchmaking platform for CS:GO. The event allegedly used FACEIT anti-cheat. It’s anti-cheat is pretty solid though the hackers have bypassed it. The initial response from FACEIT admin also seemed quite vague. “If they are cheating, AC will ban them,” the admin said.
However, Red Bull has released yet another statement earlier today confirming the disqualification of the hackers and announced a new winner that would advance to Europe closed qualifier. Due to time constraints, the second placed team, Enhanced Esports Club consisting of ykis and Mikzuuu, will be the winner of Red Bull Flick Finland.
Moroccan-born video game streamer, Imane “Pokimane” Anys is one of the most viewed Twitch streamers with over 4 million Twitch followers. She is ranked as the most popular female streamer on Twitch and also holds the top 10 position for best streamer of all times. She plays League of Legends, Fortnite, Valorant and many more.
She runs her own digital content empire with content across Twitch, several YouTube channels and other platforms as well. Here are some of the lesser-known facts about Pokimane!
Poki quit college to livestream on Twitch full time
Poki went to McMaster University to study engineering. In her draw my life video, she mentioned that the nature of the engineering program was rigorous & required students to take excessive course load. Her friends switched their majors leaving her alone & stressed.
All this lead to her streaming on Twitch, and she started making money pretty quickly from her streams & gained a substantial following. She then dropped from the uni, on her streams she has encouraged her fans several times to follow their hearts.
Poki got into a beef with Keemstar
Pokimane found herself in a bit of drama on Twitter in 2019. Keemstar had posted screenshots of YouTuber SSSniperWolfs’s fans on Twitter, mocking them and calling them a virgin.
The two exchanged short videos in reply to each other which ultimately sparked an even more heated reply from Keemstar forcing him to put up some of Poki’s less-flattering tweets to her friends & posted them. As per Poki, Keemstar was trying to expose her for calling a friend “gay”.
Are you a homophone @pokimanelol ? I mean I would think I were joking here. But since JOKES are “Attacks” I think you might hate gay people. Idk pic.twitter.com/KzqY9zboqg
Pokimane was accused of unfairly copyright striking YouTube videos
Following Keemstar & Pokimane drama, PewDiePie made a video that alleged Pokimane was copyright striking YouTube videos of other content creators unfairly. As per PewDiePie, the creator to make the copyright strike also earns a profit off of commentary and unoriginal content.
Creators like Memeology 101 & Fainted had their own similar criticisms of Pokimane. However, after the controversy gained more attention, Pokimane’s month Twitch channel viewership grew up by 1.5 million followers.
Pokimane is represented by a talent agency with a bunch of big clients
With Pokimane being the top 10 streamers on Twitch, one of the biggest talent agencies in North America: United Talent Agency manages Pokimane.
United Talent Agency has clients in TV hosts, musicians, comedians, actors, digital talent, esports players and much more.
Member of Offline TV
Offline TV, sometimes termed as the “Scarra House” by the fans is a collaborative endeavourbetween various big-name creators who live together as housemates.
Currently, Scarra, Pokimane, LilyPichu, Disguised Toast, Fredmyster and Michael Reeves are the members of Offline TV.
Anys will appear in the Ryan Reynolds film Free Guy
Pokimane appeared in Ray Reynolds film, Free Guy with some other big-names from gaming world like Ninja, Lazarbeam & Jacksepticeye.
Pokimane declared the same on Tweeter by saying, “Mom I’m gonna be in a movie with Ryan Reynolds.” Free Guy might open the gate to appear in future movies for Pokimane.
Imane has her own line of makeup with Winky Lux
Amazon docu-series, Streaming IRL offers a peek through into the daily lives of streamers & influencers. One of the episodes showed Pokimane, explored her day-to-day life balancing her career as a streamer & trying to expand her brand.
Pokimane explained, “I’m taking a really big step with my brand and my community in terms of doing something that a Twitch streamer has never done before, which is have an actual makeup collaboration with a big brand.”
Keeps her private life away while streaming
Pokimane has always refused to talk about her private or dating life while streaming or on any of the social platforms. She keeps her professional & personal life balanced at all times.
Pokimane signed an exclusivity deal with Twitch
When big streamers like Disguised Toast & Ninja left Twitch for other streaming platforms, Pokimane told her fans in March 2020 that she wasn’t doing the same.
She told in a YouTube video that Twitch gave me a very fair offer & that she did not want to go to the highest bidder. She told her fans that she had limited down her choices to Twitch and one more unspecified platform.
Her team won 2019 Twitch Rivals LOL Tournament
Twitch Rivals is a series of esports tournament held on Twitch which features some of platform’s biggest names with huge prizepools. Competitions for other games like Fortnite, PUBG, etc also take place.
In the League of Legends tournament, team Ez Clap comprising Pokimane, Revenge, xChocobars, Chase Shaco & Natusumiii secured the first position with a score of 2-1 against Team One Tricks in the finals. They won around $35,000 out of the $75,000 prizepool.
She hesitates to stream Fortnite now
Fortnite is undoubtedly one of the most-watched games on Twitch as it brings in a lot of views. The only problem with the game being is the lack of new content. Pokimane said that stream sniping is the biggest issue for streamers playing the game.
Ninja evenreported many Fortnite players for stream sniping who got suspended because of cheating. Pokimane said, “I get a million stream snipers, and then I want to cry.” No wonder she decided to step away from streaming Fortnite.
She runs a second YouTube channel dedicated to ASMR
ASMR stands for “Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response” and an ASMR sensation feels like a gentle yet pleasurable tingling of the scalp. Though the sensation can be caused accidentally, it somewhat resembles the feeling of goose bumps mixed with static-like feeling of limb going numb.
https://youtu.be/QWM4ORKEvQc
The channel has 41 videos with specific ASMR trigger with techniques ranging from tapping microphone to teaching French. The channel has grown to 682,000 subscribers.
January 2019 was the best & worst month of her life
In one of her YouTube videos, she explained that January 2019 was the worst month of her entire life while also being the best month. Her team won Twitch Rivals League of Legends tournament and she got to stream at the Pro Bowl.
Towards the end of the month, she told on her stream that one of her friends from the university had passed away. This same friend had reached out to her few days prior to show support about the copyright striking controversy surrounding Pokimane. Talking about her fans on stream, she said, “And that message is just to please take care of your friends. And especially try to help people in a non-judgmental way. And not everyone is ready for help at all times, but just being there for someone and hopefully being there when they are ready to accept that help can make such a difference in someone’s life.”
Andreas ‘Xyp9x’ Hojsleth has taken an indefinite leave from his duties as part of the active roster at Astralis. Reports have surfaced that the Danish organisation have been practicing with their coach, Danny ‘zonic’ Sorensen in place of the clutchmeister.
The news of Xyp9x’s indefinite departure follows Lukas ‘gla1ve’ Rossander’s announcement of a 3 month break to avoid burnout, with the IGL being replaced by Jakob ‘JuGi’ Hansen in the active lineup and Emil ‘Magisk’ Reif taking up the role of the IGL for the time being.
The report further states that Astralis unsuccessfully attempted to move up the timeline of Patrick ‘es3tag’ Hansen’s arrival from Heroic. The Danes have also established contact with Ninjas in Pyjamas for Jonas ‘Lekr0’ Olofsson. But, the two teams are yet to come anywhere near to an agreement over the transfer fee.
For now, it seems zonic will likely be taking Xyp9x’s place as they have been reportedly practicing with him. In case that happens, it will be intriguing to see whether Magisk retains the IGL duties or if it’s passed over to zonic.
Alternatively, if Lekr0 is transferred by NiP, Astralis would then have an 8-man roster, which would be a prospect intriguing in itself.
Ryan Reynolds has proved his versatility as an actor by playing characters with varied backgrounds for years. Having played the role of a superhero for both the Marvel and DC universe, Reynolds is set to take the role of a video game character in his upcoming movie Free Guy which hits the theatre on 3rd July.
The film is set to be embraced by the likes of Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, Imane “Pokimane” Anys, and Seán “Jacksepticeye” McLoughlin along with Lannan “LazarBeam” Eacott. The movie is based on a video game, explaining why the director chose to go with multiple cameos of video game personalities.
The Deadpool lead plays the role of a Non-Playable character ‘Guy’ who is essentially a bank teller, located in Free City, inside the open world of the game, with a major hiccup being the game set to be taken offline as the movie progresses.
Other than Ryan Reynolds and gaming celebrities, the movie features quite a talented cast with Takia Waiti and Channing Tatum on board. The unique method to express humor that these artists have shown throughout the years will result in quite a satire.
“I haven’t been this fully immersed and engaged in something since Deadpool. I think we live in really weird times right now, you’re watching the news and the top story today is ‘it’s the end of the world.’ I felt a kinship to the character in that you can sometimes feel like a background character. The world is on loop and you have no control over what’s happening.” said Ryan Reynolds.
“On a very literal level, Free Guy is about Guy, who’s a bank teller. He works in a bank, and his bank gets robbed 17 times in a day, and eventually, he realizes that’s weird and not normal,” Levy described to an eager audience, who enthusiastically responded to the premise of the film. “Ryan and I have talked about Free Guy as a superhero origin story without the cape and tights and the IP. If you were living in a video game and could master the system, your powers would be limitless.” – said, Director Shawn Levy.
The movie is set to feature both the real world alongside a virtual one, with a storyline resembling Jim Carry’s blockbuster The Trueman Show. Reynolds announced the arrival of the film at New York Comic-Con.
The Audi Formula E driver Daniel Abt has been found guilty of subbing a pro-gamer to race in his place in the recent FE Esports Championship race. The German driver was disqualified and fined €10,000. The race was held on Saturday as part of the ongoing Formula E Race at Home Challenge Series. Abt had qualified in second place at the virtual Flughafen Tempelhof circuit in Berlin and finished in third place.
Other drivers grew suspicious of Daniel’s sudden improved performance as Abt had yet to score a point in the first four rounds of the series and immediately scoring a 3rd in the circuit raised their suspicions. Abt was also participating in a Zoom feed of the event, but his face was blocked by a microphone, making it impossible to figure out his identity. After the race many drivers asked Formula E to conduct an investigation.
“Really not happy here because that was not Daniel driving the car himself, and he messed up everything. That was ridiculous,” said the former F1 driver Stoffel Vandoorne “I’m questioning if it was really Daniel in the car.”
Supporting Vandoorne, two-time Formula E champion Jean-Eric Vergne said:
“Please ask Daniel Abt to put his Zoom next time he’s driving… I’m pretty sure he wasn’t in.”
Later an investigation was called, in which Formula E ended up checking Abt’s IP addresses and determined that Abt wasn’t driving. Instead, the 18-year old professional gamer and e-sim racer Lorenz Hoerzing was behind the wheel. Hoerzing participates in the FE Challenge series and was banned from the Race Challenge series as a result of this misconduct. He was also stripped of his sixth-place finish in an FE Challenge race.
Later Daniel Abt released an official statement and apologized for his mistake.
“I would like to apologize to Formula E, all of the fans, my team, and my fellow drivers for having called in outside help during the race on Saturday. I didn’t take it as seriously as I should have. I’m especially sorry about this because I know how much work has gone into this project on the part of the Formula E organization. I am aware that my offense has a bitter aftertaste, but it was never meant with any bad intention.”
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![Twitch Rivals Matches [Full Gameplay] Ft. Yassuo, BoxBox, Pokimane ...](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/B-XIcaB76BQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
