No spoilers but heartbreaks ahead if you’re a fan of The Last Of Us franchise. The developer Naughty Dog just got the shock of their lives when a ‘disgruntled employee’ decided to resolve the issue of delayed payments by leaking the game online.
The storyline of the game was leaked through a YouTube video and spread all across before it got removed. That’s not just enough, the rumor has it the employee decided to leak the entire build because of the apparent mistreatment in the company.
However, the good part is, the savior moderators at the r/thelastofus subreddit have decided to lockdown the entire forum until ‘indefinite’ period. Which means, you can no longer create, submit, comment or any new activity on the subreddit until and unless the lockdown gets lifted.
Folks at the subreddit deserve mad respects for the way they’ve handled the spread of the leak. The genuine fans of the game will, without a doubt buy the game irrespective of the story line leak. However, it does come about as an embarrassment for the whole team at Naughty Dog. The only way the developers and publishers come out on top of this is by launching the game early.
OG is still unable to play without two of their players from the original lineup at WePlay! Pushka Leauge Division 1.
With Topson and Midone currently within Southeast Asian territory making them region apart from the others. Ceb filled in the position three void while Neta ”33” Shapira stepped in place of Topson at the ESL One Los Angeles Online and they were able to reach grand finals of the event but this time around ”33” will not be joining TI Champs for Pushka Leauge.
The 22-year-old Irakli ”W1sh-” Peranidze will be a final alteration to the lineup. ”W1sh-” is the former Mid laner for the team Wind and Rain and is been playing professional Dota since December 2016. Mostly making it to minor events and qualifiers, his team attended ESL One Hamburg in 2019 as a replacement in place of Invictus Gaming as they had to pull out due to visa issues.
As per HLTV’s weekly rankings released every Monday, Fnatic restored their place as the best CSGO team in the world after a hiatus of more than 4 years. Their recent run of form in the past 2 months, coupled with a string of poor results for NAVI, meant that they dethroned the IEM Katowice 2020 champions after 2 months.
The latest boost in their rankings comes after an impressive win at the ESL Pro League Season 11 Europe, where the Swedes topped a stacked Stage 2 having lost only once in their five matches, which gave them a direct entry into the Grand Finale that culminated into an epic 5 game thriller which was settled in Mirage with a scoreline of 16-12. They have also only lost thrice in the last 13 Best of 3 Encounters, that has seen them soar from 6th in March to the top of the standings in just over a month.
What is even more impressive is that this same team was once labelled “washed out” and “out of ideas” when they hit their worst form last September, having been relegated to 28th in the overall standings. Despite the widespread criticism, they have continued to stick with their core 3 of KRIMZ, JW and flusha, and by adding one of the biggest teenage talents in brollan, who at 17 already has an HLTV rating of 1.12, it was only a matter of time before they got to their best. Admittedly, though, even the loyalists did not expect such a surge to become #1.
On the other hand, things haven’t been the smoothest for Astralis and Navi. The former, after losing to Fnatic yesterday at ESL One Road To Rio Open, slipped to 3rd, their lowest since last September. Navi also is not having a great time either, after a subpar performance in the Pro League after experiencing the highs of Katowice. They begin their Road To Rio in the CIS region against Espada on May 1.
For Fnatic, though, they could not have peaked at a better time. They will aim to recreate their magic against Dignitas as they have their sights set to win this event and take home a major chunk of the $115,000 prize pool.
Riot’s new competitive shooter VALORANT has thrown a direct challenge at CSGO in a contest to become the greatest first-person shooter. The game combined several elements from CSGO with that of Overwatch and came up with a unique sort of gameplay that got an immense positive response from casual and competitive gamers alike. Besides the gameplay, Riot also provided 128-tick servers, performance optimization for low end rigs, low latency throughout the world and promised to bring a world-class anti-cheat system to VALORANT, making it a fan favourite and giving it a strong edge against CSGO which lacks at all those aspects.
VALORANT wasn’t free from criticism either, streamers like Tfue and summit1g have expressed strong opinions against the game previously. From being called “slow” and “bland” to a “piece of s**t video game“, VALORANT had to endure all sorts of criticism from streamers. Shroud however, seems to be positive about a bright future for the shooter and puts it ahead of CSGO in popularity.
Michael “shroud” Grzesiek is a professional streamer and ex-CSGO pro player who had regularly been seen streaming VALORANT on his Mixer channel. The streamer had previously said that VALORANT is an easier game than CSGO, and that is exactly why he thinks it’ll be more popular among the masses – “Do I think Valorant will overtake CS? Probably. I just think it’s a much easier game to get into. It’s much more pleasing to the eye, a little more casual. Counter-Strike is a bit more hardcore.”
It’s evident that shroud really enjoys playing Riot’s new title since he has been showering VALORANT with compliments recently. He had also mentioned that it was his favourite game of all time and even came up with an agent tier list for the game.
While it’s true that VALORANT had promised things CSGO was lacking at, Valve wasn’t gonna sit back and watch Riot take over their legendary title. Rumours have aroused about Source 2 engine coming to CSGO in near future, possibly around summer – the same time VALORANT is expected to release. HenryG has also recently teased 128-tick servers for matchmaking.
With the constant stream of updates, Valve has pushed into the game ever since VALORANT was announced, fans can certainly expect to see some more surprises coming from the side of Valve. The release of Source 2 and 128-tick servers might just give CSGO enough room to edge past VALORANT in the race to become the most popular competitive shooter.
2K, the publisher behind the yearly WWE 2K franchise of games, has announced the cancellation of the next release in the series as well as the release of a separate new game on the horizon. The company released an open letter on Monday detailing its decisions.
“We are applying what we’ve learned to the next WWE 2K simulation game with a renewed focus on quality and fun,” the company said.
“As part of that commitment, we are extending the production timeline and will not be releasing a WWE 2K simulation game in 2020 … We want to ensure the development team at Visual Concepts can create a great game that will entertain grizzled WWE 2K veterans, as well as newcomers who want to climb through the ropes and step into the ring for the very first time.”
The company though announced a new game, called 2K WWE Battlegrounds.
After having received crude criticism from IGN, GamesRadar & Metacritic, 2K Games have decided to push the production of the next installment to next year, which means the new game might as well be called 2K22 directly, skipping the annual tradition.
Esports World Academy (EWA), the company registered in Dubai is in the news for over a week for all the wrong reasons. Now, OG’s Managing Director, Charlie Debbs, whose was mentioned by EWA, have confirmed to TalkEsport about the false and misrepresentation of facts, and that OG is not in a partnership with EWA.
The post explained how EWA was enabling “ambassadors program” to run a pyramid-like scheme in the industry by paying commissions. The post got a lot of traction and EWA responded in retaliation by claiming they’re legally suing Rudraaksh Bhatyal & Sid Joshi for their comments made against them. The details of these are available at Reddit on this post.
EWA’s claim is false. We don’t have any partnership with them.
OG’s Managing Director, Charlie Debbs
Morever, Esports World Academy have removed all the pages in question, the website’s partners & press section is no longer available and returns a 404 error.
The name which got dragged through the mud mid way was OG, the world-famous esports squad based in Europe. EWA claimed to have their partnership on their website, but it appeared faulty. Alongside OG, VISA too had their section in the ‘partners’ page to attract more esports organizations.
After thorough research, it looked apparent to us that the partners section had nothing concrete. It appeared more of a monologue than a mutual partnership. So we went through and thorough.
We contacted several organizations named in the EWA’s website and in response to our report, OG’s MD, Charlie Debbs confirmed to us, “EWA had faked that part of the email,” which he sent to them in February this year. “EWA’s claim is false. We don’t have any partnership with them,” Charlie added.
This certainly clears all the air and controversies around the EsportsWorldAcademy which falsely celebrates to have big names as their global partners. We have sent an email to EWA to get their response and see if they’ve a reasonable explanation on the use of fake email by OG to garner popularity.
Turner “Tfue” Tenny was involved in Mr. Beast’s Rock Paper Scissor charity tournament for influencers aimed at raising money and awareness. Hypebeasts from the entertainment industry took part in Mr. Beast’s venture among which were the rivals of streaming industry Ninja and Tfue.
The pair went back and forth in the past with Tfue challenging Ninja to a boxing match. Things got heated when despite having a strict against streaming the event on the participant’s respective channel, Tfue went ahead and took the liberty to broadcast it on his own Twitch channel and leaking Mr. Beast’s phone number and stream link along with the code for the chat group.
I’m so fucking sorry @MrBeastYT I fucked up so bad fml
As the details leaked, the tournament was flooded with fans desperately try to get in the group thus crashing the tournament. Things took an interesting turn when Turner’s chat was spammed by his fans asking to shift the blame onto Ninja and so did Turner.
Ninja saw this coming and responded on Twitter saying: “Were not supposed to be streaming this bro! the 50k you have can be directed to the main stream where people can donate to the charity :)”
Were not supposed to be streaming this bro! the 50k you have can be directed to the main stream where people can donate to the charity 🙂 https://t.co/szLYUNbonm
Jessica Blevins, Ninja’s wife, and manager stepped in when she saw the community going after Ninja. She quickly discredited the claims and said that shifting the blame onto Tyler, when he is not at fault is something that is a usual occurrence. She further discredited Tfue’s brother’s opinion by showcasing Tfue’s rapacity for money as he failed to share his viewership with the mainstream which could have helped in raising the money swiftly. She further noted the fact that if FaZe Clan wanted, they could have taken millions off their former player for his misconduct in the past, but FaZe let him go scar-free.
Somehow everyone was trying to blame this on @Ninja (per usual) which is why I'm saying something.
The community is going after Ninja for starting yet another beef, but looking at the bigger picture, all he did was point out Tfue’s mistake. Turner broke the rules and streamed the event, leaking the group chat link and Mr. Beast’s phone number in the process, then went ahead and openly criticized Ninja rather than owning up to his mistake which he did a while later.
In Vadodara, an online game of ludo took a drastic change when 24-year-old woman’s spine was broken by her husband after she defeated him. The woman suffered serious spinal cord injuries and had to be hospitalized immediately.
As per 181 Abhayam helpline counsellors, the woman used to give tuitions at her home in Vemali to help the family with income. In order to prevent her husband from spending time outside with other people in the society and to make him stay indoors, she told her husband to play online ludo on his mobile phone. After he agreed to play the game, his wife continuously defeated him in three to four rounds consecutively.
A counsellor from 181 Abhayam mentioned in a statement that,
“A sore loser, he (the wife’s husband) started arguing with his wife and the verbal duel turned ugly. He started beating her with such ferocity that the woman developed a gap between two of her vertebrae.”
The counsellor further added by saying that, “His ego was hurt thinking that wife outsmarted him and was way more intelligent as she also contributed to the family income.”
The accused man works in a private electronics company and earns sufficient money to sustain both him and his wife. His wife did a beautician’s course and started giving tuitions as they had to pay the instalments of their home loan.
After the incident was discovered, the woman was taken to an orthopaedic surgeon and she decided to move back to her parents instead of going back to his husband after the treatment. “But before that she wanted to go to her home to collect some documents. We then counselled them both”, the counsellor further added.
Chandrakant Makwana, the project coordinator said,
“Our counsellors gave options to the woman whether she wanted to lodge a police complaint or settle the issue. In this case since the husband apologized and the woman did not wish to register an offence.”
However, the man was told that he could have been arrested by the police if his wife would have registered a complaint against him as physical torture is a serious crime. “He agreed and apologized to his wife. She too agreed to return to him after spending a few days with her parents,” the counsellor said.
Also, a written undertaking was taken from the couple regarding the matter.
Okay okay, don’t form an opinion of this report as untimely or premature. This is not an aftermath, but an assumption based on the actions of both Valve & Riot Games throughout the decade. This opinion isn’t just because of the new FPS game, or the hype around the Closed Beta for Valorant, it is because of what we’ve been observing for years.
Valve, what they have been doing for so long is just milking too much on their successful game. The community, in general, have always felt disappointed with Valve’s offerings and response to the pointed bugs.
Photo: RIOT
The way Valve addresses the issue of their world famous FPS, it feels it is never on their priority. It was never on their priority, until now. So what has changed? Valorant. The arrival of Riot Games’ new FPS game to compete with CS:GO. This could turn deadly for a 20-year-old franchise like Counter-Strike if Valve isn’t on their A-game. Ofcourse, CS:GO has the most loyal fan base of all time, but it might not stop them from moving to Valorant considering the similarities between the two games.
Why won’t CSGO fade
Numerous reasons are there to justify CSGO’s dominance in the overall competitive esports industry. Not just their loyal fanbase, the way they’ve kept the mechanics of the game intact for two decades, adds to the base of it. No superpowers, no out-of-the-box heroes, or overpowered skills. A balance skilled game with utilities and a rudimentary economics system at place.
Counter-Strike has been into gaming and what the modern world calls, esports industry for the longest period. The loyal fans of Counter-Strike franchise made a record during the recent quarantine scenario worldwide by hitting 1.3 million concurrent gamers on Steam.
The gameplay, mechanism CSGO offers is routine. It’s not complex, hence, people find peace playing the game. They know they’re evenly numbered, ofcourse with exception to hackers. Perhaps, largely, the game offers a pretty simple and skillful mechanics with no storyline or exclusive edge to someone who plays the game from a long time. Even if someone is grinding CSGO for over 5 years, and you, download the game today, will have the same resources available to you.
The in-complexity of CS:GO is what keeps its fanbase intact. But not if they’re treated as second-class gamers.
Why Valorant appears to have an edge over CSGO
It’s pretty simple, Riot Games are responsive. I am not getting into debates on their delays to League of Legends, but judging by their performance and activity so far towards Valorant, it’s impeccable.
The community craves for attention and that’s what Riot Games are feeding. They’re listening to the noise we make, they’re adding new stuff, they’re monitoring. And most importantly, they’re focusing on their ANTI CHEAT!! HELL YEAH!!
The way Valorant has been attracting new gamers and their unique way of awarding closed beta keys is the biggest talk of the online gaming world. They broke CS:GO’s record on Twitch in a day, yes in A DAY. Obviously it was being said there were loads of fake accounts watching the streams to gain access to Closed Betas, there are no concrete facts to ascertain the numbers, regardless.
But isn’t there more to it? Valorant offered 128-tick gaming experience unbelievably from their closed beta seasons, and CSGO is yet running at 64-tick as they are into their eight year of success. If you’re friends with one of the IT server managers they’ll tell you how ‘hard’ it is to switch to a 128-tick. Or if I failed the sarcasm attempt, it doesn’t take a dime for a company like Valve to move to 128-tick.
What adds the most of a game is both its casual and competitive community. And Riot has their focus correct. The competitive scene of Valorant is already on with players getting signed up, and Riot also teased about it a couple of times.
But.. but.. but..
Valorant has a task before it. The skin market created by Valve is just unbelievable, how they were able to create a market of that size with billions of dollars being traded is commendable. Valorant, on the other hand has not made a noise about it yet. But some of the community experts suggest, they won’t be as good as CSGO’s skin market.
From cheating to match-fixing, the community has seen it all. Let us go through some of the biggest scandals in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive‘s timeline.
ESEA Bitcoin Saga
E-Sports Entertainment (ESEA), a subsidiary of Modern Times Group (MTG) that also owns Electronic Sports League (ESL) was caught red-handed for mining Bitcoins through its game client in 2013. At first, ESEA chief joked it off as an April fool’s prank. Then it initially claimed to have mined $280 in 48 hours, however, they eventually owned up to their blunder entirely and revealed to have minted $3,602. The community was highly furious and the matchmaking platform faced the wrath of its userbase.
“The fact that the code was even written to be integrated into the client in the first place is a major concern,” said an enthusiastic ESEA user explaining the whole mining saga on his YouTube channel. ESEA apologized and announced that all the money raised through Bitcoin miner would be added to ESEA Season 14’s prize pool. US Regulators had whipped ESEA with a $1,000,000 fine for “infecting thousands of personal computers with malicious software code,” said the press release.
KQLY handed VAC Ban
Photo: Fragbite
Hovik “KQLY” Tovmassian was drawing quite some attention in late 2013 within the French Counter-Strike scene. After he won ESWC 2013 and showcased his fiery skills at DreamHack Winter 2013 under Clan-Mystik, he was soon signed by Team LDLC. His side secured satisfactory performances at DreamHack Valencia 2014, ESL One: Cologne 2014 major, and EMS One Katowice 2014 major, though, he joined a couple of his LDLC teammates’ fresh project over at Titan. They triumphed DreamHack Stockholm 2014 but that was beginning of the end for KQLY!
On November 20, 2014, he was handed Valve Anti-Cheat (VAC) ban. This ban raised several doubts in the minds of the community that anticipated various other professionals to follow suit. However, for much of the ruckus, his 1vs1 clutch against Virtus.pro’s Jarosław “pashaBiceps” Jarząbkowski at ESL One: Cologne 2014 laid birth to what we today call as ‘KQLY shot’ or ‘KQLY style’. He clutched the round over his opponents with a jump-shot over at A-site elevator on Dust II to avert overtime and conclude the map 16-14 in regulation.
Olofpass or Overpass?
At DreamHack Winter in December 2014, fnatic were paired against Team LDLC in the quarter-finale. Both sides grabbed a map each and Overpass being the decider began. Team LDLC took 12-3 lead in the first half on the CT side and won the second pistol round as well. Fnatic had earlier warned that they had ‘crazy stuff’ planned for Overpass.
Subsequently, fnatic unveiled their confidential boost at CT spawn which allowed fnatic’s Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer visible access towards B-short, monster tunnel and washroom. After they used this cheeky boost, Team LDLC couldn’t win a round and fnatic secured the map 16-13. However, the organizers ordered a replay of the third map citing ‘texture transparency’ and ‘immortal bugs’ used by either sides.
It is compelling to observe that NetcodeGuides.com was founded by Sam “DaZeD” Marine (captain of iBP lineup) and Casey “caseyfoster” Foster. Four members of iBUYPOWER had placed bets on CS:GO Lounge while the fifth player, Tyler “Skadoodle” Latham came out of the controversy unscathed. He went on to win ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 with Cloud9. In 2017, ESL, DreamHack and ESEA lifted the indefinite ban over players, however, Valve is adamant upon its stance.
2016 Gambling Fiasco
Gambling and betting was on a rise in Counter-Strike: Global Offensive since 2014. The websites offered services to place bets on professional matches and several casino games facilitated through CS:GO skins. This game apparently has a mighty underage player base that was exposed to illegal gambling. CS:GO gambling was a huge underground industry and the bubble had burst in 2016 when popular YouTubers were caught promoting their own websites without revealing it to their viewers.
Miscreant YouTubers Tom “ProSyndicate” Cassell and Trevor “TmarTn” Martin advertisied CS:GO Lotto as they allegedly faked to win thousands of dollars alongside sham reactions on live streams. The former apologized and obliged to be more transparent in the future. However, TmarTn initially said his ownership of CS:GO Lotto was never a secret, but, later uploaded a half-baked apology on YouTube as US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) initiated an investigation into the matter.
Skeleton in the Closet – forsaken gets caught mid-game
Photo via CSGO2ASIA
In 2018, OpTic traveled all the way to India to sign an Indian roster foreseeing the growing esport market in the sub-continent. The North-American organization hoped to capitalize on the scene with first-mover advantage. However, the end result was quite the contrary as the move backfired. OpTic India conducted open tryouts and finalized the final five after much deliberation with Nikhil “forsaken” Kumawat being selected. 24-year-old had a shady past.
Earlier in 2017, forsaken was banned by Esports Integrity Coalition (ESIC) for 2 years due to his association with a VAC banned account. Apparently, his ban was reduced to 6 months upon reportedly providing proofs that he sold that account and the possessor had allegedly used hacks and received VAC ban. OpTic’s consultants in India were highly optimistic of ‘forsaken’s finesse’. OpTic India had won ESL India Premiership 2018 Winer Finale (later disqualified) and qualified for Zowie eXTREMESLAND 2018 in China.
OpTic India initially lost its opening match against FrostFire 16-6 and were paired against Vietnam’s Revolution in the decider. OpTic India had secured the first map but forsaken went blatant in the second map with few nasty shots and admins paused the game to inspect his PC. He labeled his hacks as ‘word.exe’ and the whole community ridiculed and mocked his silliness.
