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Dota 2: The International Battle Pass 2020 – Release Dates and More
Every year during the months of April and May, Dota 2 fans across the world eagerly look forward to the release of the Battle Pass for The International. For the unaware, The International is the biggest yearly tournament of Dota 2 and the biggest esports tournament of the world. It boasts a prize pool greater than any other esports tournament and keeps on increasing every year, without exceptions. It’s also one of the most viewed esports tournaments, with the TI9 grand finale recording almost 2 million peak viewer count across western streaming platforms like Twitch.
The release dates of The International battle passes are generally not disclosed any earlier than its actual release. So, fans are mostly caught off guard by surprise when the battle pass finally releases. The Battle Pass consists of a plethora of exclusive features like chat wheel sounds, hero personas and sprays while also providing owners with a wide array of hero cosmetics, treasures and couriers. These sorts of exclusive limited time items make the Battle Pass a must-have for hardcore and casual Dota 2 players alike.
The International is also a crowdfunded tournament. With 25% of all the battle pass sales going to the prize pool of the tournament, fans can directly contribute to the prize pool by making purchases related to the Battle Pass.
Recently, a post has surfaced on Reddit where the poster seems to predict the battle pass 2020 release date by noticing a paradigm among the previous Battle Pass releases.
According to u/Gmoney228, this year’s battle pass will be released on April 21. He also provides several points of logic behind his deduction, the first one being, “Battlepass mostly releases on Tuesdays”. Looking back at history, Battle pass 2019 was released on May 7th, a Tuesday. Battle Pass 2018 was released on May 8th, also a Tuesday. This year, April 21st is a Tuesday as well. He further claims another point that “workshop sets are due 27th of April and every battlepass was released 5-6 days earlier than the workshop deadline.” He also mentioned the workshop deadlines for different years and their corresponding Battle Pass release dates:
- “International 2019 workshop deadline May 12, Battlepass released on 7th May on Tuesday”
- “International 2018 workshop deadline May 13, Battlepass released on 8th May on Tuesday”
Both of these were 5 days before the deadline, and judging from this logic he predicted the 2020 Battle Pass release date to be on April 21, a Tuesday which is 6 days before the workshop deadline.
The logic behind the conclusion that The International 2020 Battle Pass will release on April 21 is pretty solid. Unless Valve decides to change their yearly pattern due to the unfortunate pandemic that is currently going on, there’s a high probability that we’ll get to enjoy the Battle Pass soon enough. Among all these uncertainties the only thing certain is perhaps the fact that none of us can wait any longer for the final release of the Battle Pass 2020.
CSGO Update Introduces 1-vs-1 warmup mode, 7 New Music Kits, and Map Changes
A new update was shipped for CSGO on Friday. Other than several significant map changes, the update included 7 new music kits after which the update is named “Change Your Tune“.
The most notable thing in this update is, however, the new and revised warmup mode. Currently only available in the wingman maps of Vertigo and Train, players will be spawned in 1v1 arenas during warmup. The blog post mentions that the new mode “may be added to other maps and Competitive Matchmaking in the future.”
Another new thing introduced through this update is the ability to copy any observed player’s crosshair. “Wondering how your teammates see the world? As a spectator you can now view other players’ crosshairs.” To copy another player’s crosshair players can simply go to the scoreboard and select the name of the player whose crosshair they want to copy.
Here’s the detailed list of changes as mentioned in the release notes:
[GAMEPLAY]
- Added one-on-one warmup arenas when playing Wingman mode on Vertigo and Train
- Added a new weapon parameter “inaccuracy jump apex”, set to 331.55 for the Deagle
[UI]
- Added ability to see crosshairs of observed players
- Added ability to copy crosshairs of other players (through the scoreboard).
- Added ability to listen to music kit MVP anthem when inspecting music kits.
[MUSIC]
- Added the Masterminds Music Kit Box, available in regular and StatTrak™ variants, featuring 7 new music kits:
- Austin Wintory, Bachram
- Daniel Sadowski, Eye of the Dragon
- Dren, Gunman Taco Truck
- Matt Levine, Drifter
- Sam Marshall, Bodacious
- Tim Huling, Neo Noir
- Tree Adams and Ben Bromfield, M.U.D.D. FORCE
[MISC]
- Fixed agents sometimes not holding weapons on the end of match screens
- Fixed agents in Perfect World version sometimes vocalizing English radio commands
- The Events tab of the Watch menu will now also present online competitions
[MAPS]
Anubis
- Fixed the prop draw distance at canal in front of A
- Increased the bomb explosion radius from 400 to 450
- Improved readability at A main and middle
- Several clipping fixes
- Fixed some missing prop faces
- Improved navigation so bots now know how to drop down areas
- Moved the spawn icons on the radar to the right coordinates
- Fixed nav file issue
Chlorine
- Visual rework of base textures to help visibility
- Made B bombsite lights brighter
- Removed floating displacement near CT spawn
Jungle
- Added more loot crates in few regions of a map
- Fixed some community bug reports (including flying ladder)
- Updated minimap tablet texture
- Added one extra house near Radio Tower region
- Reworked wooden fences prop (removed holes)
- Fixed collision mesh of solar battery model
Vertigo
- Brightened i-beam textures
- Replaced wooden fence on A site with metal version, decreasing wallbang damage
Bombsite B:
- Lowered height of site by 32 units
- Tightened exit from T stairs
- Removed “window” entrance from mid, replaced with a raised entrance near CT spawn
- Flipped railings on stairs to site, to allow jump up from sandbag position
- Reworked site layout and cover
- Moved connector from B halls that went under mid, to further towards T spawn
- Enabled B site in Wingman mode
- Experiment: In Wingman mode, during Warmup, players will spawn in an 1v1 arena
Train
- Moved pigeons that sometimes spawned near Ivy, no longer visible from CT side of ivy
- Fixed not being able to walk off top of ladder on oil train, B site
- Brightened scaffolding by oil train
- New collision model on dumpsters found around the map
- Experiment: In Wingman mode, during Warmup, players will spawn in an 1v1 arena
SirActionSlacks Bot Created by Tsunami is Winning Fans’ Hearts
SirActionSlacks is an iconic Dota 2 personality and is admired across the world by millions fans of the MOBA by Valve. He is the heart of almost every Dota 2 major and not to mention The International – the biggest esports tournament in the world. He is a wonderful host with a charming personality that never fails to put a wide smile in the grumpiest of faces.
On the internet too, Slacks is quite the personality to follow. His Twitter handle is renowned for creating the funniest, bravest and sometimes highly controversial tweets. The creator of the “Loregasm” series inspired Tsunami – a Dota 2 caster and content creator – to an extent where he went ahead and coded a SirActionSlacks Twitter bot. The bot analyses Slacks’ previous tweets to recreate new tweets he might have tweeted.
The news of this newly released Slacks bot soon hit the front page of the Dota 2 subreddit and fans were hysterical. One Redditor humorously said, “We can no longer tell which is the bot” because the tweets oddly sound like exactly something Slacks would say.
Purge – a Dota 2 caster, analyst, host, coach and everything in between – also seemed to love the Slacks bot as he claimed that he was already a “huge fan” of the creation of Tsunami and thanked him for it. He jokes how “95% of these (tweets) look real.”
As a Reddit user has mentioned, “I refuse to believe that these tweets aren’t handwritten. The implications are too scary otherwise.”
Has technology gone too far? Is Slacks actually a finely coded robot? Guess we’ll never know.
CSGO: Late bruttJ’s family files a lawsuit against his former teams
The family of Matheus ‘bruttJ’ Queiroz is suing his past teams, Team Reapers and Imperial Esports, for negligence after several claims that highlighted the condition of the player who had to play in pain amidst of the team houses and the privileges provided to players were not “adequate.”
In December 2019, team Imperial Esports reported about the sad demise of this 19yo Brazilian player after the latter was struggling with a lot of health complications. bruttJ had resorted to a 10 days long break before passing away as his medical reports did link his medical conditions to a brain infection as reported by the Brazilian news site Universo Online (UOL).
Months later, his family has raised a lawsuit where they have decided to sue his former teams, Team Reapers and Imperial Esports as they did neglect the living conditions in the team house which were claimed to be “Poor” by his folks and thus lead to their son’s death.
Universo Online (UOL) reported about this incident, bruttJ suffered from “severe headaches, constant vomiting, and loss of vision” after the latter joined his teammates at the team house of Reapers’ back in August 2019. Other members of the team too did report about the same kind of hardships they were facing alike what bruttJ was feeling where they did blame the water supply factor as one of their former players said in a statement: “Some people had intestinal problems, but we’re not sure if it was because of the water or the food”
Further reported by his mother, in November 2019 where bruttJ despite of swapping to Team Imperial yet came across similar kind of issues where he and his teammates found it difficult to rest as their team house was in the vicinity of an airport followed by the misery added by shortage of food supplies.
“There is a lot of evidence that reveals the lack of adequate health conditions in the gaming house,” stated the lawyer who is currently representing bruttJ’s family in this lawsuit. “Above all, there is even more robust evidence that the teams did not provide healthcare to the player and failed to act when events under their responsibility were indicated,” he added.
Team Imperial did offer around 150USD to the family for helping them with the medical bills before they initiated payment of 1000USD to the same after their son passed away as a result of the complications he had been facing.
In defense, Imperial claimed to have been working with the deceased’s family but they failed to figure out a plan. Also, they denied all the allegations about the conditions of the Gaming house contributing to the death of bruttJ as the latter lived there for just 15 days with Team Reapers showing some defiance by stating that the player didn’t show any symptoms of his claimed illness. Please stay tuned for further updates.
China to ban online gaming, chatting with foreigners
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has decided to put a ban on online gamers from playing the games with players from foreign countries, and even chatting with them, in general, is now forbidden.
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The super-popular Nintendo Switch hit Animal Crossing has also been banned by the Chinese government in which you simply create a home and play with cute animals. Hong Kong pro-democracy activist Joshua Wong showed a scene from Animal Crossing and spoke that, “it’s too much for the CCP” and took a dig at Chinese president Xi Jinping.
Taiwan News reported that there were many players venting about their dislike for the CCP after logging into Animal Crossing and making satirical content bagging about the CCP and its failure of acting against coronavirus.
The new strict laws from the CCP will see the banning of plagues and zombies, things like map editing, role-playing, and even organizing a union in a game. The following things have been banned in the game:
• Plagues
• Zombies
• Map Editing
• Role Playing
• Organization/Clan/Union
The following commands/laws have been enforced by the CCP on gaming:
Online gaming: Bans the gamers from China from playing with other gamers on servers across the globe.
Surveillance: The Chinese government will be keeping an eye on ALL single-player online games.
Gaming curfew: The CCP has also enforced a strict law that leads to a gaming curfew for those under 18 years of age that prevents them from gaming after 10PM. The amount of money you can spend inside of the game has also been limited.
As reported by TaiwanNews.com.tw
Source: https://www.taiwannews.com.tw/en/news/3916690
ESL One Cologne 2020 uncertain due to suspension of large gathering in Germany amid coronavirus outbreak
The cathedral of Counter-Strike is facing uncertainty amid COVID-19 pandemic. German Chancellor Angela Merkel will reportedly announce specific measures and restrictions that shall suspend large gatherings across the country until late August 2020. The country has registered 134,753 cases, 3,804 deaths and 77,000 recoveries as the government begins easing the lockdown.
The ESL One: Cologne 2020 is scheduled from July 6-12 with 16 teams in attendance. The Masters Championship event boasts of whopping $1,000,000 prize pool. Lanxess Arena in Cologne was set to host 15,000 blazing fans, however, that seems unlikely considering global state of affairs as of now.
Later ESL released a statement through Twitter, “Earlier today it was announced that all large gatherings cannot take place until August 31, 2020 in Germany. We are working on what this means for ESL One Cologne 2020. We will update you on this as soon as possible.” The event organiser is apparently assessing the situation and the event cannot be entirely ruled out if the situation improves in near future.
ESL is arguably one of the highly affected event organiser amid COVID-19 and the succeeding lockdown. The organisers had to host ESL One: Katowice 2020 in an empty stadium after its license to host mass event was revoked. The ESL One: Rio Major 2020 was set to take place from May 11-24, but it has now been rescheduled for November later this year.
Valorant dev reveals addition of ranked mode to closed beta in a couple of weeks
An overwhelmed Twitch streamer tweeted his concern over unbalanced matchmaking in the Valorant beta access. He attached the screenshot of the scoreboard where he had 42 kills yet lost the game since three of his teammates couldn’t get past single digit. On the contrary, three on the opposite team were sufficient players while two seemed to be rookies.
A large bunch of Valorant beta users are likely to have played other FPS titles and their command over Valorant will be more than MOBA or RTS players. The unranked matchmaking, in turn, is counter-productive as it bares highly skilled players to compete among themselves to push the ceiling while the amateurs are crippled.
To OP’s surprise, Riot Games’ directer for Valorant Joe Ziegler replied to his tweet and assured, “Our first ‘rated’ testing is coming in a couple of weeks, stay tuned.” He further said, “Our matchmaker will always try to find you a fair match. Right now, it is calibrating and we’re iterating as we see game data. But with more time and more matches played you should see more fair matches.”
Prior to the beta launch, Riot Games had revealed 7 ranks with three divisions in each rank. The ranks are explained in particular here.
Earlier this week Joe tweeted, “For everyone playing, thanks for giving us a lot of great feedback and looking into some balance tuning and fixes in upcoming updates while we continue to drive towards launch. For those who are still waiting, we’re working on getting more of you in. Thanks for sticking with us.”
Arena Of Valor’s update shipped for Indian subcontinent after almost 1.5 years
One of the most popular games of China’s Tencent Games that goes by the name of Arena of Valor (Chinese version known as Kings of Glory) initially launched the Indian server in the month of March in 2018. The player base and the community of the game grew steadily in the coming months as well.
The Indian server was given complete attention in the starting days through regular updates, weekly events, and monthly tournaments. The game was eventually able to build a decent player base and community. In the summer of 2018, Tesseract Esports collaborated with Tencent Games to host Arena of Valor Summer Championship with a big prize pool of 5,20,000 INR (around $7000 USD). ExDee GaminG came out on the top after dominating the entire tournament and winning the same. After that, the team went on to represent India at the Asian Games 2018 held in Jakarta and to other international tournaments as well but that was all.
After Summer Championship, no tournaments were organized for AOV India and its community. The last update that the server got was in the month of December in 2018. Also, after a few months, the ranked queue, weekly events and other in game entities such as game spins and shop were taken off from the game. However, the loyal players and fans that truly loved and enjoyed the game still kept on playing the game despite getting any events or updates.
Finally after a long wait, Arena of Valor devs have come up with a new South Asian serving for its players from the regions like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Nepal and other neighbouring countries. The account migration process for transferring the account from the old Indian server to the new South Asian server started a week ago and as soon as the new South Asian server comes today in the afternoon, players will be able to transfer their accounts to the new server and all their in-game items will be transferred as well.
It will be really interesting to see what awaits in the nearby future for this new South Asian server as League of Legends Wild Rift being developed by Riot Games is still far away from the release. Will there be any future tournaments for Arena of Valor South Asia (India)? Only time can tell.
Riot releases guidelines to disguise blood for Valorant tournament organizers
In only a few days since the closed beta release of VALORANT, Riot has made it clear that they’re in it for a long run by starting to plan an esports ecosystem for their competitive shooter ahead of time.
Considering the hype currently being built around the game it’s of no surprise that Riot has already started securing the future of the game as an esport. The game broke several records even before its actual release by reaching 1.7 million concurrent viewers across Twitch on the very same day of its closed beta release.
On Tuesday, the devs of VALORANT mentioned in their blog post about how much they are enjoying their journey in the game. As Whalen “Magus” Rozelle writes, “For us, working on VALORANT and helping to develop its competitive ecosystem—especially as it grows into the professional space—is daunting, humbling, and inspiring all at once.” He further claims VALORANT has certainly got the qualities to be a successful esport and that they have big dreams about the future of the game.
Riot promises to build up the esports scene around the game based on three key factors – Competitive integrity, accessibility and authenticity. Whalen claims that they’ll make sure that “aspiring pros” get “a fair shot at reaching the highest levels of play through merit-based competition.” He further promises the players that the team will work tirelessly to ensure that matches are decided “based on a person’s skill and teamwork rather than external factors.”
The dev team is also cautious to not pace things up too fast so that it’d hurt the integrity of the game, “we’re not looking to force anything too quickly without knowing what’s best for esports fans.”
They also released VALORANT community competition guidelines which provides in-depth information to aspiring tournament organizers about the restrictions which are imposed, most notable of which is, while organizers can use the word “VALORANT” in the name of their competitions to promote their competitions they must not use the words “Championship”, “Champions”, “Season” or “League”. Medium and major tournaments have to take prior permission from Riot before using such words.
However the biggest restriction coming from Riot might be the requirement of every tournament to turn off blood.
This along with other features of the game like naming the bomb “spike” and naming the teams “attacker” and “defenders” instead of “terrorists” and “counter-terrorists” like CSGO will potentially provide a much better room for the esports scene to develop by attracting sponsors who were retaliated by CSGO for the same reason.