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Topson is back! OG announces full squad for ESL One Birmingham 2020

Sonu Banerjee
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Topson is back! OG announces full squad for ESL One Birmingham 2020

All the midlaners who are about to face OG in the upcoming days are probably getting tense right now, because OG has officially announced that their star midlaner Topson has rejoined their active Dota 2 roster.

Amid all the ongoing speculations about the future of the OG squad, the 2-time TI winners have announced through their social media handles about the return of Topson to the team.

They have also listed out their full squad for the upcoming tournament on their official website. Other than Topias “Topson” Taavitsainen, their roster includes  Sumail “Suma1L” Hassan, Yeik “MidOne” Nai Zheng,  Martin “Saksa“Sazdov and Johan “N0tail” Sundstein.

“We’re thrilled to have the boys back in full force to join the EU/CIS group phase bloodbath and show where our hunger for greatness will drive us,” the blog post by OG said.

Fans will be able to see this team in action on ESL One – Birmingham 2020 starting from May 25th, with OG taking on team FlyToMoon in their group stage match.

Here’s the detailed schedule of OG in the tournament which was also included in their blog post.

Needless to say, with TI10 drawing near, all eyes will be on OG for the time being to assess their performance as a team and also for the sheer entertainment the team brings to the table.

Moreover, with the Battle Pass for The International 2020 releasing tomorrow, OG claims that it’ll act as a direct buff for their team which is infamous for using the Battle Pass features like sprays and voice lines as a method to tilt their opponents.

“If you think I’m toxic, you’re brainwashed”: Ninja to followers

Varun Gavankar
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“If you think I’m toxic, you’re brainwashed”: Ninja to followers

Ninja, the pioneer of Fortnite left Twitch for Mixer a while ago but that didn’t affect his friendship with friends from the former home.

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins poses for a portrait at Red Bull HQ in Santa Monica, CA, USA on 5 December, 2018. // Carlo Cruz/Red Bull

His friends are fellow other popular streamers, DrLupo, TimTheTatman and CouRageJD. However, they don’t play Fortnite often like they used to, but they play a handful of other games together while having a good time cracking jokes and laughs all around.

In recent times, a Mixer user on his stream called him out of being toxic towards other streams. In no time, Ninja got defensive and spoke up to the accusation.

Video: Dexerto
Video: Dexerto

“Toxic? Homie, me and my entire group of friends make fun of one another,” Ninja said. “It’s what we do. We yell at each other. We insult each other. That’s how close we are with one another, and we’re the only ones who can do it to one another.” Ninja then told the viewer that he “doesn’t give a s**t” if his friends don’t like him. 

Ninja didn’t stop there, he continued to explain that “everyone bitches and complains” when they’re playing video games.

This is what happens in every group of friends and so does with the one of Ninja’s, for example, the group often teases DrLupo for being the oldest of the group.

“Anyone who thinks I’m toxic… You’ve been brainwashed, dude. I’d love to know the person you’re watching,” Ninja added.

Ninja further says it’s the jokes between friends what often makes playing video games together so enjoyable.

After Ninja’s statement, a handful of other Mixer viewers came onboard into Ninja’s defence. It also seems like it is only some of the viewers that consider him toxic, neither game developer nor streaming platform considers the same and so he hasn’t received any public warnings or suspension notice to his account.

Bymas to stand-in for FaZe in DreamHack Masters Group Stage

Sarjyo Mukherjee
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Bymas to stand-in for FaZe in DreamHack Masters Group Stage

FaZe has officially announced the addition of Aurimas “Bymas” Pipiras as a stand-in for them in DreamHack Masters.

Bymas takes the place of recently departed Olof “Olofmeister” Kajbjer in the roster as the Swedish veteran has decided to back off from the roster due to a lack of motivation.

The 16-year-old Lithuanian is a completely unknown element for the Tier-1 level and carries a freshly minted tenure under 1337HUANIA. His showings in FPL was enough to catch Nikola ‘Niko’ Kovac’s attention, upon which the Bosnian highlighted in his HLTV interview where he had nothing but praises for the prodigy.

Much like Helvijs ‘broky’ Saukants who proved his worth on both LAN and Online, Bymas is a young talent waiting for an organization to give him the opportunity, which he is likely to get in abundance under FaZe. The Lithuanian is a bigger gamble than the Latvian considering the fact broky was doing well for himself in the professional scene for Epsilon before he joined FaZe.

We get to see Bymas in action for FaZe later today as they lock horns with GODSENT for DreamHack Masters at 21:00 IST.

Original Xbox Source Code Leaks Online

Prateek Jain
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Original Xbox Source Code Leaks Online

According to a report, an anonymous source has leaked the source of the original Xbox console. The new leak reveals the source code of Microsoft’s iconic console OS and Windows NT 3.5. The new leak paves the way for users to fully emulate the OS and the underlying Kernel, making it easier for players to emulate the environment and enjoy the classic games.

Talking with Verge, a Microsoft employee had confirmed the reports of leak and authenticity of the source code. Microsoft is currently investigating the source and the extent of this leak, but according to some people with knowledge about emulators, fully emulating the Xbox OS and kernel will still be difficult and this leak won’t help much with that.

Xbox isn’t the only console to fall victim to hackers, recently Nintendo’s Wii and Nintendo 64 also had their source code leaked online. Nintendo acted swiftly and quickly took down the source with a DMCA notice and is currently investigating for the people behind the leak.

Microsoft has always taken a hard-line stance against emulators, even then people still tried to recreate the Kernel and OS. Console emulating has always had mixed reactions among player communities and developers. People developing these emulators usually do it for fun and share it with the community without making any profits. For them emulating a game is an exciting challenge and with this leak, more people will be able to access the source code and develop an emulator.

Source: Gamerant

Messi helps Man City player to become the fastest-growing streamer on Twitch

Varun Gavankar
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Messi helps Man City player to become the fastest-growing streamer on Twitch

The Man City striker, Sergio Agüero is one of the world-famous football personalities and he has now hopped onto the bandwagon of seeing sports personalities on Twitch in these tough pandemic times. Large gatherings have been prohibited for a while as a prevention measure against the virus which has also led to the cancellation of Football Leagues all around the world for the time being.

Agüero who goes by the username SLAKUN10 has earned over 857,024 followers on his twitch account over the course of the past month. The Argentinan striker has been doing regular streams on his channel, the support and love he has received in his twitch journey has made him now the fastest-growing streamer while passing the likes of Anomaly, Bugha, just9n, Tfue and Pokimane as per Twitch metrics.

messi aguero twitch streams

Not just that, he has also bagged him a slot in Top 10 Most Watched and Top 15 Highest Peaking Viewership for Spanking based streamers.

Considering English is not his native language, his streams are mostly Spanish based and despite not everyone being able to understand Agüero all the time, his personality has made a notable dent into the Twitch world.

To celebrate his success acquired outside the pitch about reaching 1 million mark, the Man City star decided to call his close friend and the international football icon, Lionel Messi.

The ten-minute phone call started off with Agüero letting Messi know about his adventures while roleplaying in GTA Online.
“I’m trying to get into GTA Online. It’s like real life. There are even mob bosses, it’s very cool.”, Agüero said.

The International football icon, Messi, also confessed that he has even created an account on the streaming platform to acknowledge his friend’s success by interacting with Sergio’s Chat.

“Yeah, the other day I showed up but it goes super fast,” Messi said. Aguero, who apparently ignored Messi that one time, defended himself by stating to his close friend that “this is work for me, man. I’m focused on this thing.”

The call ended with Messi teasing Sergio’s about his decision to call him the earlier morning on the same day at 9 am, not fully understanding the icon’s schedule.

“At 9 AM? Me? Did I call you? I guess I was bored, I don’t know. I just wanted to tell you ‘have a good day’,” Aguero laughed.

Although FIFA 20 and GTA V seem to Agüero’s primary focus, he can also be found streaming other games like Fortnite, Call of Duty: Warzone and VALORANT.

AI creates new PAC-Man version just by watching 50,000 episodes of gameplay

Anuj Rautela
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AI creates new PAC-Man version just by watching 50,000 episodes of gameplay

Pac-Man had his first taste of ghosts forty years ago, now an AI has given the ravenous puck a new maze to chew his way through — without even going through the game code.

Pac-Man Patterns — Ghost Movement (Strategy Pattern) - DEV

AI has recreated the game without first being taught any of the rules. Instead, the AI mimics a computer game engine to create a new version of the arcade classic.

Researchers at GPU giant Nvidia recreated the game by making the model they call GameGAN watch about 50,000 Pac–Man episodes. After digesting the sample, it came out with a fully-functioning new version of the game.

Seung-Wook Kim, the lead author on the project said, “We wanted to see whether the AI could learn the rules of an environment just by looking at the screenplay of an agent moving through the game and it did!”

Nvidia said that it’s the first time that GANs have cloned an exact copy of a computer game engine.

What is GameGAN?

GANs create new content such as photos of faces that don’t exist  by pitting two neural networks against each other: a generator that creates samples and a discriminator that examines the designs to work out whether they’re real. 

GAN inventor Ian Goodfellow, a machine learning director at Apple, compares the process to a competition between counterfeiters and cops. The two networks learn from each other to create new fakes that could pass as the real thing like a convincing Picasso forgery. Or in this case, the system created a brand new version of a game.

Kim said, “Counterfeiters want to make fake money and have it look real, and police want to look at any particular bill and determine if it’s fake.”

Gamers Without Borders to host $2 Million CSGO Charity Event

Bhavya Shah
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Gamers Without Borders to host $2 Million CSGO Charity Event

A philanthropic initiative by Gamers Without Borders is heading the Counter-Strike: Global Offensive way. Gamers Without Borders has pledged $10 Million in its fight against COVID-19 pandemic. The organization is hosting a series of online tournaments across various titles and CS:GO is the next in line. 

The string of events began on April 24 earlier this year and it will cease on June 07. While the Dota 2, Fortnite, PUBG Mobile and Rainbow Six Siege events have already concluded, the CS:GO edition will be held between May 29-31. The seventh and the last game will soon be announced following the conclusion of CS:GO event.

The three days online event boasts of a whopping $2 Million prize pool. But, here is a twist. The entirety of the prize pool will be donated to either of the global charitable organizations. 

This includes the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), International Medical Corps., Gavi, The Vaccine Alliance, Direct Relief, King Salman Humanitarian Aid & Relief Centre and Norwegian Refugee Council. The recipient team can deliberate and choose either of the aforementioned organizations to donate their share of the prize pool.

The $2 Million CS:GO event will host six teams, most of them being from Europe. The invited attendees are:

  • Natus Vincere
  • FaZe Clan
  • G2 Esports
  • mousesports
  • fnatic
  • OG Esports

The event, being hosted by ESL, will be streamed live on Twitch. More information about the talent crew, format, timings, prize pool distribution is yet to be unveiled. Stay tuned for more updates!

Dota 2 Battle Pass 2020 releasing tomorrow

Sonu Banerjee
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Dota 2 Battle Pass 2020 releasing tomorrow

Gamers, start readying your wallets, because the release date of the International 2020 Battle Pass has finally been confirmed by none other than Valve themselves.

On May 24, Valve has declared through their official Dota 2 Twitter handle that the Battle Pass for TI10 is all set to come out “tomorrow”. Judging by the tweet, players can expect for the Battle Pass to hit the Steam store by the midnight of May 26th.

The short video attached to the Tweet also gives us a brief idea on the theme of this year’s Battle Pass which appears to be yellow in colour.

The Battle Pass for Dota 2 is insanely popular among players of the game because it comes with a plethora of unique features for the buyers to enjoy like custom chat wheel sounds, exclusive hero cosmetics, revamped terrain, personas, quests, new game modes, and a lot more.

The Battle Pass sales also fund the prize pool of The International due to Valve’s crowdfunding strategy which states that 25% of all BP sales add directly to the final prize pool of TI. Generally, every year The International prize pool is seen overtaking the last years’ amounts, and fans will be eager to find out if the pattern continues in this year’s Battle Pass, which many are suspecting is unlikely due to the gradual fall in the player count of the game over time.

Last year, the prize pool of The International 2019 was a whopping $34,330,068 which Valve will be targeting to surpass this year. It’s also highly likely that Valve will set an attractive reward for the Battle Pass buyers for surpassing last year’s prize pool, a paradigm which was seen in previous Battle Passes.

Dr Disrespect uninstalls Valorant after placing Bronze 3

Sonu Banerjee
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Dr Disrespect uninstalls Valorant after placing Bronze 3

Herschel “DrDisrespect” Beahm IV is one of the most iconic streamers on Twitch. Generally known to be in the centre of online controversies, the 38-year-old streamer still has a huge fan following and is loved by many for his unique and hilarious on-stream character which he portrays. Although he hasn’t found himself amidst another controversy this time, but he has pulled off a classic DrDisrespect move once again after losing a bet to a fellow streamer.

Ranks in Valorant

DrDisrespect had made a bet of 100 subscribers with another popular streamer TimTheTatman on which one of them would be placed in the highest league after completing their VALORANT placement matches, and it appears that the results made the former completely uninstall the game itself.

Both the American streamers finished their placement matches by May 21st and while TimTheTatman opened a rank of Silver 2, DrDisrespect could only reach Bronze 3. Needless to say, this placement might have caught DrDisrespect off-guard, since Bronze is almost towards the bottom of the spectrum of competitive ranks in VALORANT. A streamer of his calibre opening such a low rank is bound to be embarrassing to say the least.

However, DrDisrespect adhered to his words. He gifted his competition 100 subs but took out his anger on Riot’s competitive shooter in the process.  He uninstalled VALORANT live on his stream and said that he is “never playing it again.”

He also got rid of the VALORANT’s anti-cheat system – Vanguard. “Get rid of Vanguard too. Get it off my system. $250,000 PC, you think in going to have some Vanguard security system on it? Wrong!”

Other popular streamers like Shroud and Ninja didn’t leave this opportunity to add heat to the situation as they teased DrDisrespect for being placed in the lowest parts of the rank charts.

DrDisrespect was swift to respond in kind, as he unfollowed both of them on Twitter without expending a single word.

While it’s obvious that these incidents were all done in good humour without any hard feelings being involved, the turn of events was indeed hilarious for the fans of the streamers to experience, and probably a bit embarrassing for the Doc, whose gaming PC is now devoid of the shooter set to release on June 2.

Learn about the top strategies Jagex has used to monetize RuneScape

Varun Gavankar
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Learn about the top strategies Jagex has used to monetize RuneScape

RuneScape, sometimes referred to as RuneScape 3, is a fantasy massively multiplayer online role-playing game developed and published by Jagex, first released in January 2001. Since its release about 19 years ago, this game is definitely one of those who have laid the foundation of the gameplay of today’s MMOs. Apart from laying the foundation is has also gathered a lot of noticeable achievements and world records during its course. The game which was developed by Jagex has kept millions of active players stuck to it, Thanks to epic events and a huge world which is constantly being updated in order to nourish the experience.

RuneScape 3 is also a must-have business for a developer and the company. So this game, this is an MMORPG not only focuses on player satisfaction but also provides monetary gain for Jagex. How did Jagex do it? Here’s a summarized brief explanation of some of the noteworthy strategies Jagex used to make more money.

Chapter 1: Sequeal of Fortune

RuneSpace runs on a subscription model where if one pays a monthly fee to enjoy the game. This business model was incarnated within the game back in 2002 and ever since until 2012, the monthly fee has been rising slowly little by little until in 2012 when Jagex decided to introduce a new complementary monetization model called as Sequel of Fortune.

Sequeal of fortune was a limited-time event where players had to spin the wheel and the player would win various valuable prizes of a noticeable amount of gold. The players also received a certain amount of free spins every day, it was also possible to obtain additional spins by completing certain tasks in the game, or you can choose to buy spins with real money.
Although, a considerable number of players were not happy with the system as the players who opt to pay would receive extra spins, which apparently turned the system into a pay-to-win environment in RuneScape. However, Jagex tried to defend this particular system several times, the controversy affected the game a lot and so Jagex decided to replace the Sequeal of Fortune with a similar system with little alterations called as Treasure Hunter in 2012.

Chapter 2: Treasure Hunter

The replacement of Sequeal of Fortune, Treasure Hunter event consisted of a system where players were handed a certain amount of loot boxes with having extremely rare items inside. In order to open those particular boxes, a special type of keys would be required which can only be obtained from a particular time to time, although those keys would also be bought with real money if wanted.

Treasure Hunter offered all kinds of attractive prizes, like XP lamps, extremely rare items that provide a noticeable deal in experience to its players which also could be used to turn up the pace of growing a particular skill within the game.

Treasure Hunter exists within the RuneScape even today and not to forget, last year, 50 promotions were made around the system which simply shows the level of importance of this particular system for Jagex. Well, being a little different than Sequeal of Fortune, Treasure Hunter received the same criticism for the possibility of buying the keys with real money. Those complaints were marginally less than the previous case. Jagex has known how to handle these scenarios, his systems are used even in today’s video games of all types.

Chapter 3: Rune Pass

Jagex introduced an event in 2018 called as the RunePass which was inspired by the battle pass.

The event ran for a timeline of two weeks and had a series of missions that needed to completed in that particular timeframe in order to obtain exceptional rewards. The RunePass has two routes, a Free Track and a Premium track. The premium which could be purchased with RuneCoins, a RuneScape cryptocurrency that could be purchased for real money. Although, the Free track of RunePass lacked noticeable rewards and soon the criticism was out for the same by players. The system was later replaced by Count Yakula’s Yak Track, which apparently solved all the problems of RunePass and tuned out a win on both the ends.

Not to forget, over the years a large number of parallel markets have emerged around Runescape items for RuneScape 3 which are usually presented in specialised web pages where a player can choose to buy RS3 Gold with real money.

These are only a few of the strategies that Jagex has used to generate profit with RuneScape. Not to forget, how hard and complicated it is to generate a model with which everyone is happy at the end of the day considering all aspects. Jagex has single-handedly won with achieving a model with an already massively popular video game like this.

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