Arsenal duo Mesut Ozil and Sead Kolasinac along with PSG star Draxler have resorted to streaming Fortnite as coronavirus vulnerability mists arrival of Europe’s top Football leagues.
Coronavirus has injected fear into the hearts of millions across the globe forcing authorities to take measures in order to shut down any form of mass gatherings to prevent further spreading of this pandemic. After several cases were revealed in England including newly appointed Gunner’s manager Mikel Arteta, football leagues were left with no choice but to delay the games.
Thanks for your words and support.Feeling better already.We’re all facing a huge & unprecedented challenge.Everyone’s health is all that matters right now.Protect each other by following the guidelines & we’ll come through this together.Well done PL for making the right decisions pic.twitter.com/0rnwHmQWha
Ozil tweeted about going live with Kolasinac and Draxler on Twitch, as his stream was raided with fans who missed him on the pitch but got to see him in action in another sport. The trio exchanged light moments in the entirety of the stream, although fans were quite skeptical about their skills in Fortnite.
Ozil is likely to continue streaming as uncertainty revolves around the arrival of the Premier League. Viewers are unlikely to be amazed by his Fortnite skills as they usually are when they see him in Arsenal colors but the objective was entertainment which Mesut succeded in.
Yesterday evening, Steam brushed past 20 Million concurrent Steam users mark to settle at a new record high of 20,313,476 concurrent users. This new record is in tandem with people asked to self-quarantine themselves and work from home, due to which more and more people have turned towards gaming.
#Steam has just reached a new concurrent online user record of 20 million, with 6.2 million currently in-game, likely due to many people staying at home due to the #coronavirus.https://t.co/bzLMfMOJvD#COVID19
Steam has the biggest games library and offers hundreds if not thousands of free-2-play games. Steam is also home to various AAA games and leading developers. Currently, the game with most users on steam is CS:GO, which reached more than 1 Million concurrent players mark for the first time since its release in August 2012.
According to Steam Stats, more than 6.2 million players were in-game when steam breached 20 Million concurrent users mark. Although the record for the highest number of in-game players at a time still stands at more than 7 Million, a feat which was achieved in 2018 when PUBG was new to Steam. Going by the pattern we can expect this record to soon be broken and we might even see a new record of more than 8 Million players in-game.
Coronavirus is still at large and a worldwide emergency has been called upon by WHO. As more countries undergo lockdown and work from home becomes a norm, more people are expected to log-in into gaming to pass time and entertain themselves.
India’s largest esports and gaming company, NODWIN Gaming and video game developer and publisher Blizzard Entertainment, a division of Activision Blizzard (NASDAQ: ATVI), announced their partnership to bring digital distribution for Blizzard to the Indian gaming audience.
The partnership with NODWIN Gaming will enable topping up your Blizzard® Balance and then use it on available Blizzard Shop products, via purchases of digital balance cards offered in Indian Rupees that are GST compliant. The distribution of the services will take place through E-commerce platforms including Amazon, Digistore, Flipkart and Novaplay.
Akshat Rathee, NODWIN Gaming’s Co-founder and Managing Director said:
NODWIN was founded by two guys and their immense love for StarCraft, the iconic Blizzard game. We believe in the phenomenal lore of the Blizzard universe and that gamers should always have easy access to all Blizzard products in India. NODWIN has always stood for making gaming more accessible and this is hopefully the first of many steps to bring Blizzard closer to the Indian gaming community
The Blizzard® Balance will be offered in set denominations of ₹360 (5 USD), ₹720 (10 USD), ₹1800 (25 USD), ₹3600 (50 USD) and ₹7200 (100 USD), which will translate to ₹425, ₹850, ₹2124, ₹4248 and ₹8496 respectively on the application of 18% GST. The Blizzard Balance will allow the users to make purchases or send digital games and in-game items through the Battle.net® Desktop app and the Blizzard Shop website for all Activision Blizzard digital products. This would include World of Warcraft®, Hearthstone®, Overwatch®, the Warcraft®, StarCraft®, and Diablo® franchises, and the multi-franchise Heroes of the Storm® on top of partner titles on Battle.net® such as Call of Duty®: Modern Warfare, Call of Duty®: Black Ops 4 and other products including BattleTag change, BlizzCon Virtual Tickets and much more.
This week FIA (Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) responsible to hold F1 race events held a committee meeting and announced the cancelation of the March 15th Australian Grand Prix as well as Bahrain and Vietnam events been delayed due to ongoing coronavirus concerns.
This announcement was anticipated by many followers and stars alike, as the spread of Coronavirus is still at large and WHO has now announced World Emergency. Amid the turmoil of cancelation of events, many fans are left with nothing to follow other than recycling through the old content of their favorite sports.
Similarly, the Sports Stars are left with too much time to pass as their calendars are suddenly becoming empty. To fill the void, Veloce Esports organized “Not the AUS GP” virtual racing event. In the event, several real-life F1 pros came together and raced against Top Gamers. One such star, McLaren driver Lando Norris streamed his race and was shocked when 70K viewers switched to his stream leapfrogging him to Twitch’s top spot over huge names like Marcel ‘MontanaBlack88’ Eris and Felix ‘xQc’ Lengyel, as well as the RLCS and CSGO’s Flashpoint.
Jamie MacLaurin, founder of VeloceEsports told BBC Sport:
Esports is a very fast-growing and exciting industry and what we wanted to do this weekend is put on a fun race for fans that are without racing in Formula 1. We sat down together and thought people will be without a Formula 1 race and sport in general and they will be staying at home trying to avoid the coronavirus so where better to put on a race than online?”
“We got in touch with Lando and he was really interested.”
Several other stars also tuned in such as Lewis Hamilton, Stoffel Vandoorne and Real Madrid goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois.
Getting these stars onboard didn’t take much time for Jamie as everyone was free and were themselves looking for things to do amid the lockdown. Following Jamie’s footsteps, various other communities also came together and announced virtual tournaments.
Professional Cyclist Geraint Thomas, the winner of the 2018 Tour de France, hosted his own races with other stars, while Simon Yates with his twin brother Adam is organizing daily events with riders from Mitchelton–Scott men’s and women’s squads as well as other teams taking part.
Whereas for Football fans, Real Betis striker Borja Iglesias and Seville left-back Sergio Reguilon fought each other at Fifa 20 after the Sunday’s Seville football derby between Sevilla and Real Betis was postponed because of the coronavirus outbreak.
Dota 2’s Epicenter Major has been called off by Valve amidst the ongoing COVID-19 Situation across the globe. With a plethora of events that have led to lockdowns, cancellation of events, Valve did decide to observe some safety measures like the cancellation of the Epicenter Major is recently followed by the ESL One Los Angeles Major who met the same fate.
After careful consideration of the current state and trajectory of the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as the health risk that this presents to competitors, staff and fans alike, we have made the difficult decision to cancel to the 4th minor and major tournaments of the DPC season.
Since past weeks, we have been coming across various events either getting called off or being held with no crowd. The latest incident we could throw some light on would be the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2020 where the event organizer was unable to get a nod from the Polish government for allowing the spectators to fill the Spodek Arena who were then forced to conduct the event crowd-less.
The cancellation of these DOTA 2 events might leave a great impact on the teams as they earn a specific set of points from the major which do help them to gain an invite for the annual event “The International” In addition to their Tweet, they added:
Given the high fluidity of the state of both the pandemic and geopolitical landscape, we will keep following the situation and decide how to approach the final major and minor of the season as the weeks progress.
Phoenix Esports was down to four following Sahil “Pashasahil” Pasha’s decision to pursue his goals elsewhere. TalkEsport had reported talks at an advanced level between U Mumba eSports and Simar “Psy” Sethi, Tejas “Ace” Sawant & Sahil “Pashasahil” Pasha. However, the organization rapidly seized its Counter-Strike division citing a lack of tournaments in the subcontinent.
Phoenix Esports is a reunion of former 2EZ Gaming players. The core of this roster has a history of praiseworthy performances on LAN. They had won ESL India Premiership 2018 Fall Finale and further secured a slot to represent India in ESL Pro League Season 8: Asia. Rahul “t1to” Sridhar had also secured the player of the year title at India Gaming Awards 2018.
“Pashasahil informed us that he was considering to join U Mumba eSports, so we thought of potential prospects to fill the void. We played a few games with Knightrider and my mates were extremely comfortable with him. After all, we know that he is a highly-skilled player,” said Rahul “t1to” Sridhar.
Abhay “Knightrider” Mulchandani has played for God Particles and District 9 until his arrival at Phoenix Esports. 22-year-old secured 2nd position at Taiwan Excellence Cup 2018 under the banner of God Particles and 3rd position at Dew Arena 2019 with District 9. His arrival at Phoenix Esports will certainly add firepower into the lineup.
COVID-19 more commonly known as coronavirus has become a pandemic threat to the global populace. The highly communicable disease poses risk of exposure at social gatherings and people have been advised to stay indoors. As the stigma and fear surrounding the virus hits an all-time high, many major events and gathering have been called off for public safety.
Esports has been one of the worst hit industries due to the outbreak of the virus. With a plethora of LAN and community events being called off, the stakeholders are currently at risk. Many notable events including the DOTA 2 LA Major, LCK, LEC and E3 have been called off due to the fear of coronavirus.
Thankfully, many kind souls have stepped up in the fight against the virus. Most recently, Sang-hyeok “Faker” Lee, the League of Legends superstar from team T1 donated $25,000 to help subdue the virus. On top of that, Faker’s teammates also announced that they will be donating the weekly amount raised from their streams for the very same cause. However, this is not the first donation coming out from the esports community, as FunPlus Phoenix and DragonX are among the other notable organizations who have actively donated for the cause against COVID-19.
Riot’s first FPS title which draws inspiration from games like CS:GO and Overwatch is all set for its release in 2020. As VALORANT prepares to rival with market leaders in the FPS genre, many professional organizations have already taken keen interest into the game. Many of the industry’s leading foreseers believe that VALORANT will be the next big thing in esports.
hey freunde, freue mich nach unserem qualifier in LA @PlayVALORANT anspielen zu können! Bin super excited und erwarte ne Menge! Haben mit @BIGCLANgg einiges geplant und freue mich euch bald mehr zu erzählen!#GOBIGpic.twitter.com/LqZfR3qa5M
This time on, Fatih “gob b” Dayik became vocal with his positive opinions about the game and how he plans BIG’s entry into the title. In a recent conversation with esports.com, gob b shared his views and opinions about the game and what the coming future might hold for it. The retired CS:GO pro said his initial views on the game were very positive, but he is also eagerly waiting for an opportunity to test it out himself to form a better impression. He said he believes VALORANT has a lot of potential due to its ability to attract players from many different games. In light of BIG clan, the organization which gob b manages currently, VALORANT might be another esports title which they might pick up.“We got together at BIG after the announcement and exchanged and planned about possible BIG projects, be it professional or amateur. We want to have a good concept at the start,” explained gob b in the same conversation.
The hype surrounding VALORANT seems to be at an all-time peak as more and more organizations take interest into the upcoming title and pitch in. All we can now do is wait for Riot to release its title and find out whether it lives up to its hype or disappoints us all instead.
On Tuesday, Column of Leo Dias on UOL published news that the former CSGO pro Shayene ‘shAy’ Victorio was sentenced to 116 years in prison as she was a partner in a company that has scammed more than 100 customers.
According to the column, shAy was a partner in an online retail store that had scammed more than 100 customers from 2013-2017 by not delivering their purchases and denying refunds. The Public Ministry of the State of São Paulo (MPSP) heard 118 people who filed a joint case against shAy and announced their verdict. Currently, Brazilian law allows a maximum of 30 years in prison, in theory, shAy can still challenge the verdict.
In a post an on her Instagram she talked about the accusation and said: (translated using Google translation)
I appreciate the concern about the news. I am not arrested and I will not be arrested, much less the fugitive as they are spreading. It is a process of a problem in which my ex-husband had and harmed me, in which he has been solving according to the time. As soon as we parted, he took 100% responsibility. I work with my image, I do live broadcasts daily, I am known in my field, I have a physical address. It does not fit in with what is being judged out there…
shAy was a professional Counter-Strike player for 11 years and last played in Keyd Stars CSGO team before retiring from the competitive scene in May 2019. She has also worked with other Brazilian Esports organizations such as Mibr, ProGaming, paiN, Santos Dexterity, and Bootcamp. shAy also had a relationship with Fer, player of MIBR between 2017 and 2019 and is currently the girlfriend of Jean-Paul, goalkeeper of São Paulo.
“Tough times ahead!” Yeah, that’s what every social animal is rebuking amidst the coronavirus pandemic. However, the stage, or rather your comfort seat beside the computer, is set. This is an interval to achieve the nostalgic merry sitting in front of your computer or console for hours and binge. Grind, grind & grind! A vast majority of the population is under lockdown, quarantine or under more severe circumstances and the ones that are blessed until now, face a plausible probability to encounter a similar state of affairs until the scientists discover a vaccine or a way to seize the pandemic outbreak.
Earlier this week, the World Health Organisation (WHO) declared COVID-19 as a pandemic – a disease spread across the globe. China, the epicenter of coronavirus is perhaps under a tight rein, though the virus has fostered the rest of the world under an immense menace. As of now, 155,829 are affected by coronavirus while 5,814 have passed away. Coronavirus is inclined to affect people over the age of 50 or those suffering from other diseases.
The gamers, thumping teenagers and millennials are apparently less likely to be affected by the virus according to experts. However, the younger population can transmit the virus to senior citizens or those suffering from other diseases. Hence, even though you are under minimal threat, you need to take precise prevention to not let the virus spread through. Here’s how you can spend your quarantined time most effectively.
Clean your PC
Photo via PCGAMER
Let us begin by admitting that we gamers are a bunch of lazy lads who would sit beside the desktop for hours but when it comes to rinsing (even bathing), we are hindmost. Since, a majority of us shall study or work from home amid the lockdown, cleaning our PC should be the foremost choice to begin with. Pick up a drenched cloth and begin by washing your mechanical keyboard, monitor, cabinet, etc. Heck, if I were you, I would further re-assemble my cabinet and get through the cable management.
To get beneath and get a true sense of an industry insider, documentaries are real assets. They take us through the soul of the events while successively enhancing the real spirit and enthusiasm. Here are a bunch of documentaries to watch while you are exhausted playing video games:
True Sight:
A documentary that highlights the scenic journey of professional Dota 2 attendees at The International.
League of Legends Origins:
A comprehensive account of League of Legends from ‘free demo to global esports titan’.
7 Days Out Episode 6:
Behind the scenes archive on League of Legends Championship Series Spring 2018.
CSGO Player Profiles:
Valve produces a couple of documentaries prior to each Counter-Strike major to highlight the journey of young, talented and distinguished players.
Explore the store
Go through Steam Store, Epic Store, Origin or Uplay to pick out the best titles comparing the reviews and feedback by fellow gamers. Several games of your choice might be discounted if you are blessed. If you are broke, free to play games can also be your companion or you might wish to try out the games you purchased years ago and haven’t played much.
Newly released Call of Duty: Warzone is attracting an enormous player base. The game was played by over 6,000,000 people within 24 hours of the launch. The best part about it? It’s free to play!
See you on the better side of things. Until then, take care of you & your loved ones.
