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Astralis ties up with bank to launch exclusive Astralis branded payment card

Prateek Jain
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Astralis ties up with bank to launch exclusive Astralis branded payment card

The Danish Esports Organisation, Astralis Group has partnered with nordic challenger bank Lunar to launch a brand new banking experience catered specially for the growing gaming audience. The partnership will entail its subscribers with exclusive digital content of the CSGO team of Astralis Group.

Photo: ESL

The partnership will be a “3 years deal” and is described as “of significant commercial value” for Astralis as it makes Lunar an exclusive Financial partner for Astralis in Nordics. The partnership will include an exclusive Astralis branded payment card and special digital content such as interviews, player videos, behind the scene footage, etc available through the Astralis Universe in the Lunar banking app.

Also Read: Royal Unibrew launches Astralis branded range of soft drinks.

Astralis is best known for its world-leading performance in CSGO, with the team winning back-to-back majors and always placing high in leaderboard across the tournaments. With this new partnership, the group will be joining Lunar and help in the gamification of banking experience for a better reach among the young gaming audience.

In our new partnership with Astralis Group around the Astralis team we morph banking and entertainment providing a whole new experience for the fans. We do this comprehensive move to drive engagement with our users, and the Astralis partnership is a significant step in creating a financial super app and connecting with our users in new ways.

We believe in building a banking experience that morphs banking and entertainment because ultimately that means our users are more likely to check the app, get in control of their finances and get the most of their money.

Ken Villum Klausen, CEO and founder of Lunar

Esports appeals to a growing, global audience, and one of our strengths is our access to a generation of digital natives. Lunar’s way of rethinking banking, use of gamification, and digital entertainment is very much in line with our strategy and it matches our primary target audience.

We are thrilled to present a partnership of this character and caliber and we have a great belief that we will be able to deliver better, more relevant, and engaging content for our fans. We are already upgrading our channels with new content, and the new partnership with Lunar gives us the opportunity to really bolster our digital channels and content around the Astralis team brand.

Jakob Lund Kristensen, CCO, and co-founder of Astralis Group

Users in Denmark can join the waitlist in the app today and the full suite of app features will be available later in 2020. To join the waitlist head over to this website and register with a valid mobile number. After some time user will receive an SMS with the download link of the app.

Currently, only those who are above 18 can register, but Lunar plans to launch a product to cater to +15 years audiences. The sign up is free of cost and the app is available for free, users only need to pay for extra services in the app.

ImAPet joins 100 Thieves as coach

Bharat Kotwani
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ImAPet joins 100 Thieves as coach

Chet “ImAPet” Singh through a twitlonger has confirmed about his coaching r ole at 100 Thieves.

The 23year old joins 100 Thieves after spending nearly 2 months of inactivity as a coach after leaving Evil Geniuses due to some internal conflicts with team’s IGL Peter “Stanislaw” Jarguz and Tarik “Tarik” Celik. Later in that month, 100 Thieves too did part ways with it’s coach Aleksandar “kassad” Trifunovićover over a mutual decision where the latter did admit to have been unhappy with the team’s progress which he felt as stagnated.

This will be a fresh start for the 100 Thieves lineup since the addition of kassad to their old Renegades squad in late 2018 where he alongside Sean “Gratisfaction” Kaiwai and Company did lay some exciting results in the course of time. ImAPet will be looking forward to bring back 100 Thieves from a swamp of some shuddering results on the server after crashing in the 5th and 6th positions at ESL’s Road to Rio Online Tournament and Pro League respectively.

ImAPet will kick off his tenure with 100 Thieves in the debut B03 series against Gen.G led by Damian “daps” Steele and his troops today at 00:40 IST for the DreamHack Masters Spring 2020 – North American Division (https://www.hltv.org/matches/2341036/100-thieves-vs-geng-dreamhack-masters-spring-2020-north-america)

After Epic Games, Sony rumored to offer free AAA games to PS Plus subscribers

Pranav Nalawade
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After Epic Games, Sony rumored to offer free AAA games to PS Plus subscribers

From today, Sony is offering PlayStation Plus subscribers a free copy of Call Of Duty: WWII as part of its Line-up for June 2020 games. Its a bit odd, as May hasn’t ended yet, but the Japenese giant made the early announcement about the game through its official Twitter account. The game will be available on the store starting today throughout June 2020.

The tweet also states that the other PS4 game which will be a part of the line-up will be revealed later this week. And according to some rumours going around, the next game will be Marvel’s Spider-Man from Insomniac Games, one of the best PS4 exclusives ever.

Gamers on Reddit were quick to spot the game on the PlayStation Store with a small PS Plus logo next to it, and the price set to free.

Although the screenshot may seem like pretty solid evidence but do keep in mind that there is a glitch in servers where any new game that is added to PS Now is shown with a PS Plus logo on the store with a free price tag. And only recently was Marvel’s Spider-Man added to PS Now. So this may be the work of that same glitch.

It’s still possible that we may get Spider-Man as a free game as Sony’s big Days of Play sale is starting soon and they might try to lure in more gamers to spend money on the sale by offering Spider-Man for free. In fact, even if Spider-Man doesn’t come to PS Plus next month, it will most probably go on sale and will be available for cheap for everyone to pick.

Mobile Gaming to generate $77 billion in 2020 at 13% YoY

Pranav Nalawade
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Mobile Gaming to generate $77 billion in 2020 at 13% YoY

Covid-19 has brought the entire world to a standstill, with many people struggling to get 2 meals a day, millions stranded, and the entire economy of the world poised to shrink amidst a long forecasted recession. Yet in these troubled times, many industries have flourished, from online groceries to Ed-Tech, OTT platforms like Netflix streaming digital content to virtual communication and collaboration through apps like Zoom and Slack.

One industry, however, which most people have conveniently chosen to ignore is gaming. According to a report by gaming analytics firm Newzoo, their original estimates of revenue generated by games has risen by more than 6 per cent from their original estimates in 2019, from $148.9B to $159B, with a scope to increase even more depending on the severity and longevity of this pandemic.

The analyst firm has increased its forecast as the pandemic continues to drive up consumer spending on video games. Image source: Newzoo

The report states that the impact of the virus, which has forced people to stay indoors, has had the most profound impact on mobile gaming, with accessibility playing a key role in getting non-gamers to find new ways to reduce their boredom by playing on their smartphones. The increase in the gamer base is slated to yield revenues of more than $77.2 billion this year, a massive 13 per cent increase from 2019.

“Overall, the 2020 forecast is up based on the higher engagement, driving higher revenues,” Tom Wijman, senior market analyst at Newzoo, told GameDaily, a gaming website. “There are some caveats to that, mostly related to delayed releases, specifically in anticipation of the next-generation console release at the end of the year. In our latest forecast, we shifted this revenue uptake from 2020 to 2021.”

While the outlook for PC and console gaming is not as bullish, with forecasts of only a 6.8% Year on Year (YoY) increase, a large part of it is attributed to many developers either postponing the release or development of their titles, citing logistic and economic uncertainty. The biggest example is Last of Us Part II, which was set to release on 29th May, has now been pushed to 19th June.

On the hardware front, things seem more stable, with consoles like PS5 being back in production at full capacity, which is not expected to delay its release date. The problem though, lies on the demand side. With recession looming and people unwilling to spend on non-essential commodities, it would seem unlikely that many would want to upgrade their existing consoles, also keeping in mind the added costs of buying a new game.

With an unprecedented, once in a lifetime pandemic like Covid19, it is hard to anticipate its true impact on the industry, as there is no historical backing to any forecast, and the scene can change any time. If the current trend within the pandemic is to be followed, gaming in general is going to overachieve its initial estimates, while it is still too early to predict consumer behavior even a month down the line. It has simply become a waiting game at this point.

Arsenal captain Aubameyang considering own esports team after virtual F1 debut

Prateek Jain
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Arsenal captain Aubameyang considering own esports team after virtual F1 debut

The Arsenal Captain, Pierre Emerick-Aubameyang may soon form an Esports team for Rocket League. On Sunday evening, Aubameyang competed against likes of Valtteri Bottas and Charles Leclerc during the Virtual Monaco GP. Competing for McLaren in the virtual Monaco Grand Prix, the Gunners captain didn’t make it to top 10 but aided McLaren in claiming the 6th spot of the leader’s table.

Talking with Goal.com, the 30-year-old admitted that esports is something he might start exploring seriously very soon. When asked about gaming he said:

“I play FIFA of course. But this year [I’ve played] a lot of Fortnite and I definitely need to play Call of Duty: Warzone. I’m actually thinking about launching an esports team and Rocket League is definitely a game that I’d need to have a team for.”

Further, when asked about starting his own team, Pierre said “Yes, definitely, something is cooking.”

Pierre isn’t the only Arsenal player to own an esports team, the German duo of Mesut Ozil and Bernd Leno both own an esports team each. Mesut Ozil launched his own team, M10 Esports, in August 2018 and goalkeeper Bernd Leno soon followed the suit after when he formed Leno Esports in 2019.

Source: Reuters.

The International 10 prize pool surpasses $5 million in only 12 hours

Sonu Banerjee
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The International 10 prize pool surpasses $5 million in only 12 hours

After the year-long wait and a lot of hype speculating its release, the Dota 2 Battle Pass for TI10 has finally been released by Valve on May 25th. The 2020 Battle Pass might well be the best Battle Pass till date due to the plethora of exclusive new content it brings to the table. It is set to revamp the Dota 2 experience for buyers and non-buyers alike.

DotA 2 Battle Pass 2020

The most notable and attractive rewards of the Battle Pass include the hero personas of kid Pudge and female Anti-Mage, and the three new arcanas of Wraith King, Queen of Pain and Windranger. The Battle Pass also brings back the guild system which was present in the game long ago, but added a lot more to it.

All these wonderful features of the Battle Pass caused an influx of users to flood the Dota 2 store looking to buy it, crashing down the servers soon after its release. All of Steam, including CSGO servers worldwide, were reported to have outages as a result of the overload. The official page for The International compendium also went offline minutes after its release due to an excessive number of people flooding the website.

The Battle Pass 2020 has already accumulated a total of $5 million to the prize pool in under 12 hours of its release, which in itself is a huge accomplishment compared to the previous years’ prize pools. That too, after the Steam server outages which started minutes after the release which rendered a giant number of players completely unable to buy the pass.

Valve has set a bonus reward of 10 battle pass levels if the prize pool hits the $40 million mark. It is certain that Dota 2 fans across the globe will be keeping their fingers crossed till the date the BP comes to an end in hopes of it creating history by TI10 wielding a $40 million prize pool.

It’s also noteworthy that the prize pool funding from the Battle Pass is only 25% of the total sales. So it’s safe to assume that the total sales of Battle Pass 2020 has already surpassed $20 million.

CSGO Grenade Texture Upgrade Codes found in Dota 2 Battle Pass Update?

Souhit Dey
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CSGO Grenade Texture Upgrade Codes found in Dota 2 Battle Pass Update?

Recently, a lot of rumours have been flying around about a close at hand Source 2 revamp for CS:GO. The update is speculated to fix a lot of existing problems for Valve’s apex FPS title and bring in some new industry-standard features on the table too. One of the many things the update is currently believed to be aimed at fixing is the annoying smoke outline bug which has existed on the Source 1 game engine for a long time.

A set of enigmatic strings have surfaced with the recent release of the DOTA 2 TI10 Battle Pass update. The strings have been linked to new lighting and particle effects for CS:GO. The strings are:

  • “csgo_show_indexed_light_indices”
  • “csgo_show_lod_origin”
  • “csgo_show_nonfogging_cached_lights”
  • “csgo_single_light_fast_path_sun_cascade_vignette”

This revelation along with the recent changes to grenade particles and addition of new Smoke and Molotov effects to the game have made the community hopeful for potential future fixes to the smoke outline bug in the Source 2 engine.

Also Read: CSGO: ALL WE KNOW ABOUT SOURCE 2, LEAKS, ANTICIPATED RELEASE

Data miner, ‘wickedplayer494’ in a Twitter post said, “Yes, some “csgo_” prefixed console commands are present in Dota 2 – but it’s more likely that these were systems adapted from CS:GO itself forward into Source 2 versions in Dota 2.

There were also some changes to grenade particles. New effects were added for all grenades ⁠— from molotovs to smokes.

This makes us just a bit more sceptical about the recent developments and the possible upcoming fix, but now only time will tell what is to come.

CSGO Servers Are Down Globally UPDATED OCT 1

Sonu Banerjee
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CSGO Servers Are Down Globally UPDATED OCT 1

Update: Users Reporting CSGO Servers Are Down In The US

Thousands of users have started reporting that CSGO servers are going offline. The issue started only a few minutes ago but hasn’t been fixed yet.

The Battle Pass for The International 2020 in Dota 2 which was released an hour ago caused an influx of players to load up into the steam servers, causing issues worldwide as a result of the overload on the server.

The overload was, however, expected. It was because the new Battle Pass had brought a plethora of new exclusive content to the game and brought back tons of stuff from last years’ Battle Passes.

Many Steam servers and game servers are down as a result, and CSGO servers are no exception to that. Reports show well over a thousand reports on CSGO servers being down across more than 60 different countries.

CSGO is currently the most played game on Steam in terms of concurrent player count, and an outage on a game of this calibre is sure to enrage the players of the game.

It’s still uncertain when the CSGO outage will be fixed, but chances are it won’t take long before Valve comes up with a solution.

https://twitter.com/bykappzr/status/1265008213876977664?s=20

Besides CSGO, users have also reported not being able to buy the Battle Pass itself, which is the root for all the trouble. It’s safe to assume that transactions across Steam are also experiencing an outage, which can’t be fixed till Valve intervenes or the load becomes lighter across the servers.

The Battle Pass 2020 update is not only huge in size but also the biggest Dota 2 update in history.

UPDATE: CSGO servers are down again today, July 15th. Several users reported having trouble loading inventory and game servers from trouble to servers.

CSGO fan recreates a spectacular version of Cache in Unreal Engine

Sonu Banerjee
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CSGO fan recreates a spectacular version of Cache in Unreal Engine

The Source 2 release for CSGO is just on the horizon, and the days before the official engine upgrade are numbered. While waiting on the hype train, what if you could take a peek at another upgrade which, although not official, could completely change the graphics of CSGO to a level that seems almost realistic?

After the Unreal Engine remake of Dust 2 which conquered the internet a while back, a CSGO fan and Reddit user u/dynsprd has successfully turned De_cache into a gorgeous piece of art in Unreal Engine 4, which was shared through a Reddit post. The thread captures a screengrab from the game which gives us the idea of how beautiful the work is.

CSGO Cache Remastered – Unreal Engine 4
by u/dynsprd in GlobalOffensive

If you too are dazzled by the stunning graphics like us, chances are that you’re unable to tell which part of Cache is this picture from. Don’t worry, it took us a while to decipher it too, but the still is from near the A-site besides default where the player seems to be taking a fatal shot at his enemy with a Deagle.

The revamp made the surroundings change too, as many of the structures are replaced by newer ones. However, the overall layout of the site seems to be quite the same.

If you take a closer glance you can notice the finer details of the map like the dust, light, shadows and textures on the walls which seem to be unbelievably realistic for a video game.

It goes without saying that this sort of graphics should almost be enough to make most of our PCs emit smoke from the CPUs, so don’t expect  to see this in CSGO anytime soon.

Contrary to popular belief, the Source 2 upgrade for the first-person shooter won’t be having any significant impact on the graphics of the game whatsoever, this not impacting the performance on older computers. On the contrary, it is much more likely that the Source 2 release will increase the performance optimization of the game instead.

DotA 2 Battle Pass 2020 Is Here With Historical Update

Sonu Banerjee
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DotA 2 Battle Pass 2020 Is Here With Historical Update

Valve has released the Battle Pass for The International 10 Dota 2 tournament despite the competition being delayed into 2021. 

The year-long wait was indeed worth it, because the The International 10 Battle Pass brings a plethora of new content to the game which can potentially revolutionize the BP experience.

The first notable feature is the implementation of the guild system. To put it simply, anyone playing Dota 2 can join Guilds now to partake in quests while earning rewards. However, only Battle Pass owners can create a guild. A completely new game mode is also expected to come in near future, similar to the likes of Underhollow in last year’s BP.

DotA 2 Battle Pass 2020

The MVP system has been revamped. It will now operate on an internal algorithm rather than by voting among the players like previous year. Another attractive feature is the ‘Pause-Screen Playground’ which will enable players to enjoy mini-games during game pauses. Previously, we could only read tips in the pause-screen which was often considered boring because after a point the tips would repeat themselves.

The wagering system has been upgraded to include streak bonuses, and the assistant which comes with the Battle Pass also includes improvements to aid players better in the battlefield.

There are also several other returning features from previous years but what comes next is the most shocking of all the contents of this year’s Battle Pass.

3 New Arcanas

Yes, you heard us right. Not one, not two, but three new Arcanas are spread across the levels in the Battle Pass. The heroes which received Arcanas are Queen of Pain, Windranger and Wraith King.

2 New Hero Personas, Female Anti-Mage

No, we’re not joking. Pudge and Anti-Mage got all-new hero personas to them. But what’s interesting was the fact that the Anti-Mage persona is female. Besides these, a new announcer pack, a new terrain and lots of custom sprays and  voice lines are also included in the Battle Pass following its regular paradigm.

Several other attractive and unique features were also included into the Battle Pass like Ping Cosmetics, kill-streak effects and living towers. Every single small detail of the new update, which is the largest update in Dota 2 history can be found in the official blog post by Valve.

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