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CSGO: All we know about Source 2, Leaks, Anticipated Release

Sonu Banerjee
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CSGO: All we know about Source 2, Leaks, Anticipated Release

The Source 2 engine is a significant upgrade to the Source engine which was used for older games. While Half-Life:Alyx uses Source 2 and Dota 2 has been upgraded to Source 2 with the reborn update, games like CSGO and TF2 are still stuck with the old Source engine.

Photo: Dexerto

However, the days of CSGO being a Source engine game might be numbered, as there have been many leaks in the last few months hinting towards the fact that the game will be ported to Source 2 in near future. If you’ve been following us for a while, you’re probably aware of how big of a change can this be.

The Leaks

The first piece of leak which shook CSGO fans came from VNN Tyler, who claimed through a video that the Source 2 port for CSGO might be coming in 2 months, but that was way back in March – add two months to that, and we’re standing right there in May.

Nors3 was the next one to comment on the leak. He tweeted out that he was informed by “reliable sources” about the Source 2 port. His tweet said, “About Source 2 being released in CS:GO in 2 months: it seems trustworthy because I heard from reliable sources BUT with Valve you can never be 100% confident with unofficial dates. Better multiply it by two.”

https://twitter.com/Nors3/status/1242173798201294851?s=19

Nors3 had also hinted towards a potential upcoming Source 2 upgrade in February 2020, when he found some strings relevant to Source 2 for CSGO. He also attached the screenshots of the codes.

https://twitter.com/Nors3/status/1224437858515079168?s=20

An update of CSGO in early April might also contain a hidden secret towards the Source 2 arrival. The update on April 9th included compatibility versions for a bulk number of maps in CSGO, which added to the speculation.

A lot of maps got compability versions today.
by u/Isola747 in GlobalOffensive

A small 12 MB update also helped in confirming the port to Source 2 which is yet to come. The tiny update removed the input lag for Nvidia users which was caused by some graphic elements being accidentally transferred to CSGO from Half-Life: Alyx, a Source 2 game.

All the speculations seemed to be tied together by one final thread which could potentially reveal the release date for the Source 2 update.

The Release Date

A Chinese website B5 on Weibo, the exclusive platform similar to ESEA revealed through a blog post that they were preparing their servers for a Source 2 release on May 18th. This resonated perfectly with what VNN Tyler had said earlier and everything seemed to come together. 

With the world entering the second week of May amid the COVID-19 lockdown, all eager eyes of CSGO fans will be restless for the next few weeks. The entire gaming world is waiting to see what 18th of May has in store for CSGO.

Dota 2: ONE Esports’ Singapore Major cancelled

Varun Gavankar
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Dota 2: ONE Esports’ Singapore Major cancelled

The final major DPC 2019-20 is now officially announced as ”cancelled”. The event was bound to happen from 20th to 28th of June in the Shrine Singapore Indoor Stadium.

The 2019-20 Dota Pro Circuit was hugely disrupted by the on-going pandemic of Coronavirus with countries going under lockdown, travel bans, restrictions on gatherings and it looks like things are going to stay the same way for a while for prevention measures.

PGL Esports, the organisation of Singapore Major confirmed the word about the cancellation in a tweet on their official Twitter account.

The Singapore Major was the final chapter of Dota Pro Circuit of this season and for the teams, one last shot to obtain a direct spot into the grand The International 10. Although, Valve has already posted an update regarding The International 10 on 1st of May saying ”it is likely that the event will need to happen in 2021.”

To all the fans disheartening from the news about the premier event, Valve has given a word that though The International is postponed for the time being, the yearly Battle Pass still will be released sometime very soon.

The first two Majors and Minors were successfully pulled-off of this years DPC season before the virus started to take over. The first DPC event to get cancelled was the ESL One Los Angeles Major followed by ample of others. Nevertheless, ESL and OGA Dota Pit thoroughly transitioned into online events to make up for their cancelled LAN events whereas EPICENTER and Singapore Major are only announced as cancelled and no word about transition into online or something alike as of now.

New Dota 2 graph reveals huge Radiant winrate advantage in early game over Dire

Sonu Banerjee
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New Dota 2 graph reveals huge Radiant winrate advantage in early game over Dire

Dota 2 is one of the hardest titles to master in esports history till this day. Winning a game of Dota 2 requires a combination of immense mechanical skills with the ability to outsmart opponents and think ahead in time. Many have compared it to chess in the past, but a lot more complex and with a zillion more possibilities at every stage of the game.

However, an aspect of Dota 2 seems to be completely dependent on luck, as a recent graph brought up by STRATZ reveals.

Can simply getting a specific side at the start of a game put you a step ahead of your opponents? It seems like the answer is yes. In fact, the Radiant side in Dota 2 has always gained a slight upper hand with respect to winrates. But the problem seems to be getting worse instead of improving through the last few patches.

Reddit user u/stratz_ken has discussed this issue in his post where he reveals some shocking findings. The Radiant side can have as much as a whopping 87% winrate in the first few minutes of the game in the bottom spectrum of the ranking system. While the number isn’t nearly as high across the top ranks, the Radiant advantage is still very prominent.

Follow-Up: Patch after Patch changes are made to hero and items. Is there a bigger problem afoot?
by u/stratz_ken in DotA2
Winrates broken down according to rank

However, the graphs also show another interesting trend regarding the winrates. The Radiant advantages across the ranks seem to decrease as the in-game time increases, ultimately disappearing near the 42-minute mark. The winrate then shifts towards the Dire side but nowhere nearly as much as the winrate that Radiant side enjoys during the initial stages of a game.

Winrates in the recent patches

The Reddit post also included a chart which captures the hero winrates based on the sides. The figures of the charts might be enough to give Dota 2 fans a mini heart-attack. Not a single hero in the entire game enjoys more winrate on the Dire side than on radiant. Only 7 heroes out of the 119 heroes present in the game – Beastmaster, Dark Seer, Lone Druid, Night Stalker, Ogre Magi, Visage and Wraith King – have a winrate over 50% in the Dire side.

Lawmakers in Philippines move Act to ban offshore gaming activity

Bharat Kotwani
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Lawmakers in Philippines move Act to ban offshore gaming activity

Amidst of the various exploits leading to violation of the Anti-money laundering, immigration, and tax laws, Bienvenido Abante Jr, the house minority leader has filed an act which seeks to prohibit the operations of any offshore gaming by any means or device within Philippine territory. Earlier along with Bienvenido Abante Jr , this Anti-POGO (Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations) act has been reportedly filed by many Philippines lawmakers in a bid to declare the Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators as an “Illegal” operation.

A POGO is an entity which offers and participates in offshore gaming services by providing an online platform where players may gamble with others over the internet. Philippine Offshore Gaming Operators (POGOs) are online gambling firms which operate in the Philippines but they cater to customers outside the country. As it is highly illegal to gamble in China and other countries and to bypass this situation, Philippines offer these operations where they make sure to function offshore so that they may continue catering to Chinese nationals and others as well who play casino and e-games online.

The act which was filled by those Philippines lawmakers and by the House minority leader as well do state in the bill,

“It is therefore declared by the State that Philippine Offshore Gaming Operations or ‘POGOs’ conducted within the Philippines have increasingly become a social menace and a source of unimaginable corruption,”

“It has made a mockery of our anti-money laundering, immigration and tax laws. It has been a source of untold criminal offenses and heinous crimes related to the conduct of such operations.”

Once this bill is successfully inculcated, it might even witness a ban which will be imposed on the online creation of the POGO hubs along with it will be the establishment of gaming labs or the possession of any “gaming paraphernalia.” as reported by asgam.com

The Anti-POGO act has been filed after the PAGCOR (Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation) allowed the POGOs to function partially in a bid to boost the government revenue due to the ongoing global Coronavirus pandemic.

Shroud doesn’t want to return to pro gaming

Sonu Banerjee
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Shroud doesn’t want to return to pro gaming

Michael ‘shroud’ Grzesiek is one of the most familiar names in the world of streamers. The former CSGO pro is renowned for his impeccable aiming skills not only in CSGO, but in any game he lays hands on.

Shroud has been playing and streaming VALORANT since the very early stages of the game. Due to his proficiency in handling Riot’s new competitive shooter, fans had already started wondering if he was looking forward to entering the pro scene of VALORANT which has already started developing. However, it seemed like shroud had other plans.

During a VALORANT stream on Mixer, the 25-year-old was asked by one of his fans whether he was going pro in the game and that’s when shroud expressed his plans of not going pro again. “It was a joke,” he said when asked by the viewer that he had already mentioned about going pro. “You’re not gonna see me go pro in a game ever again. We’re past that,” he added.

Segment starts at 05:40)

He then proceeded to explain the reason behind his drastic decision. He said that his fans didn’t understand one aspect about going pro as he claimed that if a player is looking to play competitively at the top levels of a game, then he can’t stream the game at the same time. He mentions that streaming as a professional player would be an easy way “for people to creep on your strategy.”

“…so granted as much fun as playing a game professionally is, I can’t stream it at the same time,” shroud said. He further added that it comes down to a point where, “you have to choose one or the other or try to juggle both, and juggling both is pretty challenging.”

Shroud seemed to put his streaming career ahead of a career in the professional scene of esports and decided to stick to streaming games and calling it quits to pro gaming.

Call of Duty: Warzone reaches 60 million players

Prateek Jain
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Call of Duty: Warzone reaches 60 million players

Activision just announced through Twitter that Call of Duty: Warzone has achieved another milestone of more than 60 million players. In just two weeks after its launch, the game achieved 30 million players. Followed by reaching 50 million players in a month’s time and now in almost another month, it has increased its player base to 60 million players.

Call of Duty: Warzone is a free-to-play battle royale game released on March 10, 2020, for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC. Unlike other Battle-Royale games, Warzone brought in a twist to the formula by allowing 150 players per game and the ability to respawn by winning a 1v1 deathmatch with another fallen player in Gulag.

The game also offers the old favorite – Plunder mode. Unlike the Battle Royale game mode, Plunder has no circle of death allowing squads to freely transverse in the vast map – Verdansk. Here the main objective is to gather the most Cash before any other squad does by killing enemies, completing contracts, collecting cash drops, etc. Furthermore, there is no post-death Gulag, everyone will redeploy automatically after a short period of time.

In with the latest update, Infinity Ward replaced Plunder Trios with Blood Money Trios, a faster-paced version of the fabulous Plunder mode, where players always drop money when you kill them. The studio also disabled helicopters in the battle royale mode. The studio is also offering double-level XP, double weapon XP, and double tiers, until the end of this week to apologize for the disruptions caused due to bugs.

Twitch streamer turns down $20k to stick to his principles

Sarjyo Mukherjee
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Twitch streamer turns down $20k to stick to his principles

Twitch streamer Adam ‘B0aty’ Lyne turned down a sponsorship deal worth $20000 for a reason that earned him the respect of his viewer base.

B0aty has developed a loyal fanbase for playing an MMORPG Old School RuneScape, also for the entertaining personality of his. His fame on the streaming platform landed him a lucrative deal which he turned down because the interest of the sponsors does not align with his.

On 7th May, he broke the news to his fans that he was offered the 20 grand for an hour and a half over the course of two weeks which he turned down. Later he amazed his confused fans with the explanation that he did it because, in the time period, he would have had to play blackjack and roulette, which essentially translates to gambling measures.

The streamer considers gambling as a serious addiction and would like it for his to stay as far away as possible from it, for which he did not endorse it any further. “Because gambling addiction is a real thing. I get sh*t rich, but then I can ruin a lot of my viewer’s lives, and that’s on my conscious forever” said Lyne.

His actions left his chat flooded with spams reading “RESPECT”, which goes to show how much his fans appreciated this move by him, choosing the well being of viewers over a chunk of money.

This trick in VALORANT can detect enemies through walls

Sonu Banerjee
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This trick in VALORANT can detect enemies through walls

Riot’s new competitive shooter VALORANT had entered its closed beta stage on 7th April. During the closed beta stage of any game, bugs are very likely to be found, which are later fixed by the game devs before an official release. But one such bug found by Overwatch pro Dafran can potentially cause troubles as it may enable players to get information on their enemies even through walls.

VALORANT already had reports for performance issues during gunfights and even when simply spotting enemies during playing. Dafran was also noticing major FPS drops in this game when he realised that his FPS might be significantly dropping even when he was aiming at an enemy through a wall. This Twitch clip captures what went down.

He then started looking around the map through walls waiting for his FPS to drop. The FPS drops alarmed him of the enemies’ positions which he then informed his team about. In the Twitch clip, he is seen calling out to his team about some enemies heading towards A and some being in the middle.

Generally, seeing enemies through walls in video games is regarded as ‘wallhacking’; but it appears from the clip that it’s a ‘feature’ in VALORANT currently. Needless to say, it was probably unintended by Riot and while they had previously promised players that they’ll work on performance issues, they may also need to take a look on this FPS drop issue caused by aiming at players through walls.

We’re hoping that the performance issues in VALORANT will be dished out by the time of the final release of the game, which is currently scheduled for summer 2020.

New regions added in VALORANT Closed Beta

Anuj Rautela
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New regions added in VALORANT Closed Beta

Valorant is currently going strong despite being in closed beta. It has managed to gather a very good response from its fans & players around the world. And that’s one of the reasons why Valorant’s Closed Beta in now available in the newer regions!

Regions like the United States, Canada, Europe, Turkey and Russia had the closed beta for Valorant open from April 7. After the kind of response the game got in just under a month, players across the globe are also waiting to get access to the game. Riot Games have finally decided to expand the regions in which Valorant’s closed beta is made available.

Starting from May 5, the closed beta will also be available in the following regions:

  • Brazil
  • South Korea
  • Latin America (Most parts)

A video featuring Anna “SuperCakes” Donlon, executive producer for Valorant announced the expansion of regions is a video released by Valorant. She also discussed about the overwhelming support they got over the past weeks for Valorant. She also told the name of cities where the new servers for Valorant will be installed by stating, “with data centres going live in Seoul, Santiago and Sao Paulo”.

As per SuperCakes, other regions such as Oceania, Japan, and other greater Middle East regions will have to wait a bit longer. However, Valorant developers are still aiming for a full global release in the summer of 2020.

Pyth retires from CSGO after 9 years to pursue a career in Valorant

Bhavya Shah
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Pyth retires from CSGO after 9 years to pursue a career in Valorant

Jacob “pyth” Mourujärvi, mostly reckoned for his 18 months stint with the legendary Ninjas in Pyjamas’ (NiP) roster has taken a decisive step and retired from competitive CS:GO. 26-year-old had won IEM Okland 2016 DreamHack Masters Malmö 2016 besides several other prominent results with then NiP lineup.

In a TwitLonger post, Jacob revealed that he is rigorously playing Riot Games’ first-person shooter Valorant and intends to play professionally in the future. He revealed to have found a ‘new spark’ and ‘addiction’ in Valorant. He further felt that he never got back to the level he had with NiP and mentioned to have never found a place in the recent years.

He said, “Grinding 12 hours a day this game has made me to who I am today, I’ve met so much people that are so important to me in my life, I’m so thankful for everything this game has done for me and creating memories that I will never forget for the rest of my life.”

“These past years (after NiP) I’ve felt that I have never managed to get back to the level I once was on, I never found a place where I felt I belonged and it has been hard to find the right groove with different projects, I have learned so much from all the mistakes but also taken with me the good stuff.”

“Moving forward, I have found a new spark in the new game Valorant which I’m addicted to, this is a fresh start for me and I enjoy it very much and grind atleast 12 hours a day with the goal to become one of the best players in the best team.”

He also expressed gratitude towards his former teammates at NiP and announced to shortly unveil his teammates and ‘bunch of new stuff’.

Several other CS:GO professionals have quit the game and gone all-in on Valorant. South Korea’ T1 was the foremost organisation to sign former Counter-Strike: Global Offensive professional Braxton “Brax” Pierce and his former teammate Keven “AZK” Larivière to establish a Valorant squad.

Feeling incredibly stale and tedious, Hunter “SicK” Mims took a step back from Counter-Strike: Global Offensive to pursue a career in Valorant. North-America’s Cloud9 revealed that former CS:GO player and content creater Tyson “TenZ” Ngo will be their first professional Valorant player.

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