Riot Games through Riot Korea has announced that the League of Legends Champions Korea will be suspended indefinitely due to the spread of Coronavirus in the region. In a similar fashion last month the Chinese league was also indefinitely postponed amid the fear of the spread of the virus and to ensure the safety of participants and the staff involved.
#LCK spring will be suspended from round 2 due to the corona19.
The league will be suspended after the conclusion of round 1 on March 6th. In addition to the competition, the LCKโs weekly talk show, โSunday Night LCKโ will also be suspended.
Speaking to the press, Riot Korea said:
Due to the on-growing Corona19 epidemic, in order to ensure the safety of the members of the league, we have decided to have the LCK and Challengers Korea go on an indefinite hiatus. Currently, we do not have a set return date, and will keep a close eye on the epidemic to choose the appropriate date of return.
Currently, South Korea has more than 4700 confirmed cases of Coronavirus and has been put on the Level 3 travel caution list, which says โtravel should be avoided unless it is essential.โ Till date, 28 people have died due to the coronavirus in South Korea.
Amid the growing concerns of the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), several gaming events and tournaments were cancelled or postponed. One such event was GDC 2020 which was scheduled to start from 16th March 2020 but later was postponed till Summer. Similarly, PAX East which concluded last week was also severely impacted by the virus since several developers skipped the event to avoid putting their teams at risk.
Now the question arises about the future of other major gaming events like E3 which is scheduled for June 2020. With the growing uncertainty about E3’s possibility, The Entertainment Software Association which is responsible for organizing E3 confirmed Vice in a statement that the event is still on schedule.
โEveryone is watching the situation very closely. We will continue to be vigilant, as our first priority is the health, wellness, and safety of all of our exhibitors and attendees.โ
Currently, Sony has confirmed that they won’t be attending the event for the second year in a row due to a change in focus of the event. Although Nintendo, Ubisoft, Xbox, and Bethesda, have already confirmed that theyโll be attending this yearโs E3 event.
Featuring a horror theme for the event, they have come up spooky scheduling as well with the event announced being only 8 days away and to be having a mid-week arrangement.
Dota Summit 12 will run right in between the StarLadder ImbaTV Minor and the ESL One Angeles Major, starting upcoming Tuesday, March 10 and ending on Friday, March 13. Even though it does not have DPC points up for grabs, the tournament will feature 6 teams and will brawl four days long for a share of $150,000 prize pool.
As the event was announced on such a short notice and considering the fact that the event is placed in already tight scheduling, the six teams which are participating are not yet known.
The event starts just a few days after the upcoming StarLadder ImbaTV Dota 2 Minor Season 3 and ends right before the ESL One Los Angeles Major. Summit and Major are happening in the same city so there’s a chance we might be witnessing top tier teams such as OG, Team Secret or Evil Genuises who might want to get some practice right before the big picture.
Official lineup and group stage format will be revealed shortly. Teams such as Nigma, TNC Predator and Team Liquid who aren’t playing upcoming Major & Minor do seem solid candidates for this event.
Today, Riot released the gameplay trailer of their upcoming game Valorant and with it, they also released loads of information about the game. Today we are going to be talking about eight characters that are going to be available when the game launches in beta.
Before we started it is important to understand how abilities work in Valorant. Unlike Overwatch, in Valorant abilities wonโt have a short cooldown and canโt be spammed. Firstly, each character can have up to 4 abilities.
Ultimate Ability – this ability will be unique to each character and requires multiple charges to summon. Charges are earned from completing game objectives such as defusing the bomb or surviving. These abilities might take up to 4 rounds before players can gather enough charge to use it.
Main Ability – similar to the ultimate ability this ability is also unique but less powerful. This ability is available each round while the charges and cooldown will be linked to the character.
Purchasable Abilities – Each character will have 2 slots for purchasable abilities which a player can purchase from the buy menu at the start of each round using the money earned between rounds. These abilities will work more like utilities such as frag grenade or smoke grenade.
Now with the how abilities work explained letโs go over the characters.
Brimstone
Brimstone is a tough-looking soldier type character rocking a beard and orange hat. He packs the biggest punch with the ability to bombard map with a range of orbital weapons bringing in smoke and fire on the field to a very lethal Orbital Strike ultimate ability.
Cypher
Photo via Riot Games
A spy agent with the classic white trench coat and a hat look. Cypher is able to lurk into enemy lines placing spy cams and luring them into deadly traps. He can also use Neural Theft to obtain the position of the enemy from the dead.
Photo via Riot Games
Jett
Photo via Riot Games
An agile ninja-like female agent with the ability to outflank enemies and taking them out with fast and precise ambushes. She wields several throwing knives and can throw them all out in all directions using her ultimate ability Blade Storm.
Phoenix
Photo via Riot Games
A hot head male agent wearing a grey coat who excels at rushing in the combat and pushing enemies back using fire. In his ultimate form, his neck emits fire and enable him to mark his position to respawn or rewind back to instantly.
Photo via Riot Games Photo via Riot Games
Sova
Photo via Riot Games
A ranger with Bow and arrow as his ultimate weapon and a bionic eye which enables him to track enemy movement. In his ultimate form, he can fire 3 energy bolts doing fatal damage to enemies and reveal their position on the map.
Viper
Photo via Riot Games
The second female agent who wears a black and green suit depicting her venomous aura and abilities. Using her ultimate ability she can cover an entire area in a poison cloud-enabling her to pick enemies inside the cloud easily.
Sage
Photo via Riot Games
The third female agent who specializes as a combat medic. She can revive downed allies in her ultimate ability and create walls that enemies can pass through.
Omen
An agent who specializes in teleporting and striking enemies from the back. He likes playing mind games on enemies using clones and tricking them into lower their defences.
Riot Games back at their 10-year anniversary celebration in October 2019 announced a character-based tactical FPS shooter game, Project-A which is now officially named Valorant and has a release windows of Summer,2020. Accompanying the announcement of Valorant Riot Games also released an early gameplay trailer.
The early gameplay trailer confirms the previous reports of the game being a mix between CS:GO and Overwatch. Valorant blends the unique character abilities of Overwatch with the CS:GOโs 5v5 competitive gunplay that rewards quick reflexes, and precise aiming.
So What is Valorant?
Valorant is a tactical 5on5 character-based
shooter set in a future version of Earth where technological advancements have
produced human beings with unique abilities. Currently, the game features 10
characters with each character having 4 abilities, two of which a player has to
purchase at the start of each round with the money earned between rounds
keeping in mind the money is also needed to purchase weapons and armor.
The player will start with choosing a character
that will be locked for the entirety of a match. A match is 24 rounds long and
currently only has Bomb Defusal mode similar to Counter-Strike, where one team
must plant the bomb at a bomb site while the other team defends the site.
Although the game has unique abilities similar to
Overwatch, the game leans more towards the Counter-Strike theme and the
abilities are balanced around that theme only. The ultimate abilities of each
character will have an extremely long cooldown which can last for some rounds.
For example: in the trailer we see a wall piercing arrow that on impact reveals
position of enemies upto a certain distance. This kind of ability will have a
long cooldown and can only be used a couple of times in a match, so a team must
plan out the use of such abilities beforehand.
Similar to Counter-Strike, all weapon types will
be available on all characters and in addition, each character will have a
second ability which will have a limited number of charges. Valorant combat
emphasizes more on skilled gunplay than high-powered abilities.
All guns will be just about as deadly as in
Counter-Strike and will be balanced on bases of weapon type. Similarly,
Headshots from high damage weapons will be one-hit kills, while 3-4 body shots
from rifles will be needed to kill a character. The gameplay in Valorant is as
fast as in Counter-Strike so expect firefights to be fast and short..
Riot also promises on solving two of the biggest
problem of any multiplayer game i.e. Lag and Cheating. For Cheating, Riot Games
is working on developing a kernel-level anticheat. Since the anticheat system
is working on kernel-level it will eliminate the most common type of cheats
that work by injecting code on the game process. This alone will make cheating
in the game near impossible as developing cheats to bypass kernel-level
integration takes time and are expensive.
As for lagging, Riot will offer servers with 128 tickrate in all regions which should result in more responsive gunplay and character movement. Riot has also worked hard on netcode and made several optimizations that will also help in eliminating lag. Valorant will also use Riot Direct, a cluster of servers over the global networking infrastructure that Riot built for League of Legends in 2014. Utilizing Riot Direct, Valorant will be able to detect the best route available to a given server. Since 2014 Riot has worked with many ISPs around the world to develop direct routes into their Riotโs networking hub eliminating round-bout routes that result in high ping.
Indiaโs biggest esports company, NODWIN Gaming in a landmark move, has announced its expansion toSouth Africa.
NODWIN Gaming announced the appointment of Nathaneal Slabbert, Head of Operations and Anthony Nell, Head of Sales to spearhead the functions in the region. With immense experience in esports operations, production and tournament execution, the duo adds rich value to this expansion.
Akshat Rathee, Founder and MD, NODWIN Gaming said:
South Africa is one of the biggest markets which we can go ahead and enter in and I believe it is a springboard to mainland Africa. It has traditional respect and love for gaming and sports equally. Itโs a superb country for us to go ahead and introduce esports to and build NODWINโs presence in the African continent. We look forward to working with the partners in the future and see where we can go
Merlin Wiedeking, Head of International Business, NODWIN Gaming added:
I’m very excited to have Antony and Nate on board for our South African expansion. We have big plans for the region and their experience with the local market will be key
Joining the banner of NODWIN Gaming is Nathaneal, a semi-pro Counter-Strike player himself who has over 10 years of experience in the esports industry. An expert in esports production and broadcast, Nathaneal has been a part of projects like the ESL African Championship. Apart from his work behind the scenes, Nathaneal also spends a fair amount of time in front of the camera, he has been casting and analyzing games since 2013. He had a few words to share regarding this move:
I am really excited to join the team at NODWIN. Sharing the same passion in esports with them I believe it is a definite win for the South African and African markets. It is the right recipe we need in the region, and it is super exciting times ahead for all that love esports and gaming
On the other hand, Anthony is a local South African esports veteran, having recently co-operated the Game TimeMedia production house start-up and has previously owned two major MGO’s. He has worked on projects like the Mega8 Seasonal esports tournaments, Evetech Champions League and MSI Hero Cup at rAge Expo 2019. Being an avid gamer one will still find Anthony on local Dota 2 servers and at local LAN events in South Africa.
Sidharth Kedia, CEO, NODWIN Gaming:
With South Africa, we are pushing our geographical limits. The expansion is a gateway to not just South Africa but the whole of Africa. Regarding the development of esports in the region, the scenario right now looks a lot similar to what India was 5 years ago. The South African audience is a healthy mix of PC and console players alongside the massive mobile gaming populace. We have an opportunity to create a professional and organized ecosystem of esports in the country for the brands, players, and fans to benefit equally from. With Nate and Anthony being reputable faces in the community, we are more than ready to kickstart our multinational operations.
Commenting on the expansion, Anthony Nell, Head of Sales, NODWIN Gaming South Africa said :
It is an absolute honor to join the NODWIN team and to be a part of their ambitions on the African continent. South Africa has been largely ignored in terms of global esports expansion and NODWIN Gaming International’s goals for the region are the first steps in the right direction.
In addition to the
headquarters in Johannesburg, South Africa, the new office space multiplies the
company footprint and supports its growth strategy.
As the leaders of Indian esports, NODWIN Gaming has significantly changed the course of esports in the country and is now looking forward to offering its professional services to the audience of South Africa. The two iterations of DreamHack in India provided a healthy exposure of the local culture and the esports scene for the South African teams like Bravado, Energy Esports, and Goliath Gaming. The two countries share a good rapport in the evolving esports ecosystem.
The expansion marks the beginning of new partnerships, a new audience, and a whole lot of exciting esports action for the region. This in-turn makes NODWIN Gaming the first Indian esports company to go multinational.
Nvidiaโs latest entry into the Cloud Gaming
industry has seen a rather uphill task of getting developers to stay on the
platform after the service went public in February. Soon after the release of
GeForce Now to the public, many big Studios and Publishers decided to withdraw
their games and full libraries from the platform citing Licensing issues.
Nvidia released a statement when
Activision-Blizzard withdrew from the program:
โActivision
Blizzard has been a fantastic partner during the GeForce Now beta, which we
took to include the free trial period for our founderโs membership. Recognizing
the misunderstanding, we removed the games from our service, with the hope we
can work with them to re-enable these, and more, in the future.โ
The misunderstanding that Nvidia is talking about
has to do with the licensing issues. According to a report from Bloomberg,
Activision Blizzard wanted to negotiate a new commercial agreement before
Nvidia could serve up the games, and Nvidia has been pretty clear that its business
model is to not have commercial agreements with game publishers.
Games of several developers such as Activision-
Blizzard, Bethesda, Capcom, Konami, Rockstar, Square Enix, etc arenโt available
on the platform. This includes several big games such as GTA:V, WoW, Call Of
Duty series, Tomb Raider, PES, Monster Hunter World, Street Fighter, etc.
Nvidiaโs GeForce Now is a direct competitor to
Googleโs Stadia, but fundamentally Nvidiaโs implementation of Cloud gaming is
rather different as it is more straight forward than Stadia. Basically GeForce
Now is a Virtual PC with Nvidia hardware available over the cloud on which
users are able to install any game they own license to from their favorite game
store and doesnโt need direct support or port from developers.
Unlike Stadia which works on a totally different
platform and needs direct support from developers/publishers to port the game
over. In Stadia, the user also needs to buy the license for the game they want
to play from the limited number of games currently available on the platform.
When compared to Stadia, GeForce Now is more
popular amongst the general consumer as the service is simple to use and
includes a variety of games. Plus, GeForce Now has a free-tier and supports a
number of devices which also includes a large number of Mobile Devices
something that Stadia still struggles with. Since mobile gaming is one of the
biggest markets and as big as both the PC and Console market combined.
Imagine the hard work and daily practices to
polish and level up your skills all going down the drain after losing a game of
chance i.e. Rock, Paper & Scissors, something thatโs not even related to
the game you are participating in to decide if you qualify for a Championship
to showcase those skills.
Well, this kind of ordeal happened with some Pro
FIFA players that were unable to connect with other participants after a server
outage degraded the quality of the gameโs matchmaking.
On Thursday, EA servers witnessed a total outage
that caused the online services of several games to go down and players unable
to connect. Although the outage was fixed shortly after and EA also tweeted
about the service going back to normal. But, this weekend several players
reported that they were still witnessing connection issues and server being
unstable. This time EA didnโt acknowledge the issue like they did on Thursday
and didnโt postpone/delay the online Qualifiers for the FUT 2020 Championship.
Due to connection issues, several participants
were unable to connect to game servers or even able to search and lobby up
together. This caused several hours of delays and default loss for some
participants.
In a similar case, a player named Shaun Galea took to Twitter and explained that he and his opponent Hasan Eker, couldn’t find each other to play in the qualifiers and as a result qualification was decided over a few rounds of ‘Rock, paper, scissors’ which Galea lost.
Later, in the evening EA sports confirmed the issues with matchmaking and also the โunique situationโ and told that no player was eliminated by Rock, Paper, Scissors or a match default.
EA’s servers are notorious for their issues and since its launch in September last year, FIFA 20 has been blighted with game breaking bugs and issues which have caused an uproar among the fans since. Despite several patches since launch, the game is still riddled with game breaking bugs and EA is being ridiculed about how they have handled the Fan Favorite franchise and many fans thinking the game as a step backward for the franchise.
Natus Vincere star player Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev is the undoubted recipient of MVP Award with 1.33 overall rating in Katowice. 22-year-old Ukrainian star AWPer played a total of 18 maps with an outstanding 1.47 K/D ratio. He had a total of 371 kills in 448 rounds that he played. His ADR of 87.6 is also a bold representation of his impact in each round.
He had an impressive 1.50 rating against G2 Esports in the grand-finale where s1mple and co. showcased sheer dominance over French-Serbian mix. This is the 10th MVP medal for s1mple, being the second-highest MVP recipient, Astralis’ device tops the chart with 15 medals by his side.
Photo via ESL
The second highest-rated player on Natus Vincere is IGL Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov with 1.15 impact rating. His French counterpart Mathieu “ZywOo” Herbaut has the second-highest impact rating (1.24) at IEM Katowice 2020.
Natus Vincere became the champions of Intel Extreme Masters โ Katowice 2020. In the final, the team from the CIS defeated G2 Esports 3-0.
Grand Finals
NaโVi vs. G2 Esports
NaโVi won Nuke 16-4
NaโVi won Dust2 16-13
NaโVi won Mirage 16-2
The first map of the Best of 5 series was Nuke, picked by G2 Esports. The vetoes can be found here:
G2 removed Overpass
Natus Vincere removed Vertigo
G2 picked Nuke
Natus Vincere picked Dust2
G2 picked Mirage
Natus Vincere picked Inferno
Train was left over
The grand finale series of the Intel Extreme Masters Katowice 2020 between G2 Esports and Natus Vincere kicked off on Nuke with a decisive A site defence by the Russians, who did take the lead from the gate. Starting out on the CT side, the CIS giants did prove their supremacy as they went on to take an unassailable 8-0 lead and not letting the Frenchmen to win any of their gun rounds. Kirill โBoom4laโ Mikhailov came out with all of his guns blazing after executing a nasty brawl against the French side. A perfect 3k B site defence from Boom4la did put his team in the driverโs seat hence taking an 8- Nil lead. But somehow the later failed to defuse the planted C4 on the A โ site which saw the Frenchmen finally secure a round. But this little ray of hope was once again overshadowed by Aleksandr ‘s1mple’ Kostyliev and his men as Egor ‘flamie’ Vasilyev did pick a crisp 4k to halt the wave of angry terrorists which saw Natus Vincere switch to the T side with a scoreline of 14-1. Coming from the break with the bloodlust still at its peak, G2 Esports did try their best to come out of the turmoil by winning 3 rounds successively on their CT side. But they were unable to counter the oppressing force of their opponents as we saw Denis โelectronicโ Sharipov notch up a stunning 3k to defend the ticking C4 from the CTs to help his team win the map 16-4, only making the French side to regret upon their own map pick.
With already a map in the bag, Natus Vincere did secure the pistol round on their T side on Dust2. But they couldnโt maintain their momentum as G2 Esports did win the next round by going for an Anti-eco strategy with JaCkz and AmaNEk picking up 2k each. Soon we did see the French side dismantling the plans of Terrorists with some heroics from Nemanja โhunTerโ Kovaฤ after the later kept them at bay. Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov and his men later did finally adjust to G2 Esportsโs system and strung 7 rounds together as they did build up their economy and counter- figured out their opponents’ momentum. With Natus Vincere switching to the CT side with a scoreline of 8-7, they did manage to secure yet another Pistol round by successfully defusing the C4. The iconic duo of Aleksandr โs1mpleโ Kostyliev and Kirill “Boombl4” Mikhailov did put up a stellar performance as they both did terrorize the terrorists even in their gun rounds. Under such chaotic circumstances, Nemanja โnexaโ Isakoviฤ in the 22nd round did manage to clutch a scary 3k post c4 plant on the A site which did fetch some hope in the French camp. But this happiness was short-lived when Kenny โKennySโ Schrub and his men failed to defend their planted objective as Boombl4 did help his team to climb up to match point. NaโVi did manage to seal their map pick when Ilya โPerfectoโ Zalutskiy clutched out the round with just 1HP point remaining and thus helping his team to take an unassailable 2-0 lead in the Finale series at Katowice.
The second map was nothing short of total domination. Natus Vincere annihilated G2 Esports 16-2. G2 apparently won seventh round and sixteenth round on Mirage. Flamie showcased early domination with triple kill in the initial two rounds and an ace in the third round. On the other side of things, huNter- got entry frags for his side though they couldn’t built upon it. KennyS was primarily absent for most part of the first-half while JaCkz bottomed the scoreboard with a couple of kills.
One of the yet another interesting fact is that NaVi’s new addition Perfecto was immortal throughout the first half with fourteen kills to his name. Flamie ended the map with +15 k/d and an impressive 1.91 rating. G2 got the bomb down only thrice on their T-side and Na’Vi succeeded in defusing it twice. Natus Vincere’s IGL Boombl4 had five succesful entry kills during the map which is quite a statement.
With trophy in the bag, Na’Vi grabbed $250,000. Natus Vincere also joins Team Liquid, Evil Geniuses, mousesports, Astralis and fnatic in their race for $1,000,000 Intel Grand Slam S3. In other news, Aleksandr “s1mple” Kostyliev won 10th MVP Award in Katowice with 1.33 impact rating.
