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FaZe Clan added to Atlanta Franchise partnership by Call of Duty League

Souhit Dey
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FaZe Clan added to Atlanta Franchise partnership by Call of Duty League

FaZe Clan is all set to partner up with Atlanta Esports Ventures in running the Atlanta franchise for the soon to launch Call of Duty League, the team will be called the Atlanta FaZe.

The Atlanta Esports Ventures (AEV) is a joint venture between Cox Enterprises and Province. AEV already owns the Atlanta franchise of Activision’s esports Overwatch League and had bought the Call of Duty League’s franchise rights from Activision earlier this year. The deal with FaZe allows AEV to have experienced Call of Duty players under its wings along with a decade worth of experience in marketing, merchandising and celebrity connections coming from the veterans working under FaZe Clan.

“We found partners that we love, which is not easy on both sides,” said FaZe Clan CEO Lee Trink recently about the partnership. “I wanted to look for a creative way to maintain our long-standing relationship with Call of Duty. How were we doing to do that in this new league? We certainly had lots of interesting conversations with a lot of team owners. (With the two partners) there was a mutual understanding of value and also an understanding of how the partnership will work.” 

The Call of Duty (CoD) League is scheduled to debut in early 2020 with a total of 12 teams, including two from Europe. Similar to the Overwatch League, the Call of Duty League will require teams to be based in the city they represent.

Atlanta Esports already has an arena for its Overwatch team’s matches. Currently, the CoD team will play league matches in a variety of venues around the Atlanta region, and also hold different kinds of Call of Duty events around the community to further build up their the fan base, said Paul Hamilton, president and CEO of Atlanta Esports Ventures and a principal with Province. “We think that Atlanta is already an esports hub” said Hamilton.“They make the Avengers movies there. They’ve surpassed Hollywood in terms of making movies. The city is super progressive. It’s a city that’s embraced technology and esports. Atlanta is one of the youngest cities in the country, one of the most wired. It’s an unbelievable mix of cutting-edge businesses and successful technologies. We wanted to be in that space.” he added.

“We’ve stayed out of the franchised leagues,” Trink said. “This represented an opportunity to explore what that looks like up close and personal, and what that means outside of CoD.” commented Trink about the partnership.

The Atlanta FaZe players will be training alongside the Atlanta Reign in the city, in a 15,000 square foot facility being converted now in the West Midtown neighborhood, Hamilton said.

Mother accused of child abuse, breaks jaw of her 10 year old child as he wouldn’t stop playing fortnite

Raj 'Stan' Shah
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Mother accused of child abuse, breaks jaw of her 10 year old child as he wouldn’t stop playing fortnite

Ann Perugia, 35 year old from south florida is accused of punching her 10 year old son, she punched him on his face with her closed fists dislocating his jaw after a strong argument and the son wouldn’t stop playing fortnite.

The mother was charged with aggravated child abuse, her son told the investigators that Ann was mad at him for disobeying her instructions and punched him on his face once he entered the bathroom to take a shower which led to him breaking his jaw.

Mother picked up his child from school that day and let him have his time and play fortnite till 7pm, later when she checked up on him to see if he’s ready for bed he was still playing where they got into the argument and lost her temper.

Just when the son entered the parameters of the bathroom her mom punched him on his face dislocating his jaw, the child immediately called his father Brain Butler to come and collect him.

Ann Perugia denies any kind of remarks and she made different version of the truth, yet the cops have confirmed the kids broken jaw and a few other scratches on his body.

Ann claimed her to son into a strop as soon as he went into the bathroom, when she tried to talk to him he replied with stuff like ‘I hate you and you don’t do anything from me’ hearing this she left him alone for a while.

Later she discovered he was on a call with his dad and packing his bag, while he was waiting for his father to arrive he threw rocks on her car. When his father arrived the boy complained that mother had punched him on his face and the father took him, later the cops were involved when the boy’s aunt came to know about it and officially made a complaint.

Currently Ann Perugia is under arrest she’s being held without bond and charged with aggravated child abuse with physical injury.

Online video gaming earns its spot as a major college sport

Souhit Dey
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Online video gaming earns its spot as a major college sport

Harrisburg University of Pennsylvania is currently aiming to be the best institution for video gamers in America as it eyes to dig into the growing college e-sports industry. The University has paid full attention in building up its single competitive sports team, the HU Storm, composed of the best gamers in the country in the hopes of making the University a powerhouse and household name for students hoping to make a career in e-sports.The team has lived up to all the hype and has recently won the first ever ESPN Collegiate Esports Championship, founded by the cable network in response to the growth of e-sports across college campuses this year.

The National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) came into play in July 2016 with just seven colleges and universities offering e-sports programmes for their students. The popularity has rapidly grown since then, and now more than 170 institutions are offering varsity programmes for students interested in e-sports.

Traditional college sports are a big deal in the United States where different colleges give their best to maintain their dominance in the various contact based sports involved, but Harrisburg saw potential in e-sports and an opportunity to make its name in the growing e-sports college scene. Harrisburg has already started investing in e-sports since 2017 with an annual budget of around $2,000,000 which went into building up a state of the art e-sports training facility which boasts “world-class coaches” and an “arena that will blow your mind”.

Currently, Harrisburg isn’t alone in its pursuit of excellence in college e-sports, many other Universities in the United States have also started investing in college e-sports in an effort to attract students.

Victoria Horsley from NACE, said smaller universities are eager to add the e-sports programmes because it helps a lot with student recruitment. “They see e-sports is popular so they want to jump in and try to grab all the students in their market as soon as they can,” she told the Washington Post.

Evil Geniuses take down fnatic and advance to StarSeries Grand Finals

Souhit Dey
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0
Evil Geniuses take down fnatic and advance to StarSeries Grand Finals

Evil Geniuses (EG) bested fnatic 2- 1 in the upper bracket final of StarSeries i-League Season 8 to pave their way to the Grand Finals.

The first map was Mirage. Jesper “JW” Wecksell opened up the series with a brilliant ace but Evil Geniuses replied with a force buy, sadly enough EG couldn’t hold their momentum as Robin “flusha” Rönnquist and JW replied with 5 kills on the CT force back. Tsvetelin “CeRq” Dimitrov’s landed a triple kill which enabled EG to grab their second round on the map, but that was short lived as fnatic claimed a 13-2 lead over EG and asserted their dominance. After the switch fnatic bested EG in a 2v4 clutch situation in the pistol round and edged them out with a score of 16-2.

The second map of the day was Dust 2. Peter “stanislaw” Jarguz went big with a triple kill at round start allowing the CT side of EG to get a head start into the second map. fnatic went strong with rifles and turned the tides with a 2v2 clutch on the A site by Freddy “KRIMZ” Johansson and Maikil “Golden” Selim. In conclusion, fnatic took the first half with a 9-6 lead. After the switch EG took the pistol round and went head strong into the following rounds and were unchallenged till their progress was shut down by a quad kill from KRIMZ. Sadly, to the dismay of fnatic fans EG destroyed fnatic after the round switch and won with a scoreline of 16-10.

The final map of the day was Inferno. The initial rounds went in favor of fnatic as they took a massive 5-0 lead, their road to victory was only challenged by CeRq as he came online with his AWP, but the Swede offensive was too strong for the North Americans as fnatic escalated to a 7-2 lead. EG barely managed to get their footing in the later rounds of the first half and managed to climb their way back up, only losing the first half by a single round deficit. After the switch, EG took the lead with a pistol round win and soon gathered momentum to push the scoreboard 14-9 in their favor. As EG clawed for match point, flusha managed to answer back with a 1v2 clutch, but he only managed to delay they inevitable. In the end, EG outclassed the Swedes on their T-side and took the third map 16-13.

The simultaneous map 2 and map 3 wins allowed Evil Geniuses to take the series in their favor and go 2-1 against fnatic to win their spot in the Grand Finals of the StarSeries i-League Season 8.

CSGO: Astralis’ dev1ce sheds light on Krieg’s affect on AWPing

Sarjyo Mukherjee
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CSGO: Astralis’ dev1ce sheds light on Krieg’s affect on AWPing

Astralis sniper Nicolai ‘dev1ce’ Reedtz explained his side of SG-553 debate, how the extremely power T-Side alternative to the AUG is hurting AWPers and his playstyle.

We previously reported how pro players like Fallen and Shox are calling for the gun to be nerfed. It has been a debate ever since top players were exploiting the weapon. The likes of Elige and Brehze were extremely good with it and showcasing it’s true potential, left pro players with little reason to buy the AK-47. The Krieg is known for it’s one shot one kill policy like the AK it is very powerful in close range, on top of that it boasts a scope which boost its potential in ranged fights, to that extent where Awpers are starting to prefer it over the Big Green.

“Tough night for me personally, struggling to AWP against the Krieg. Not even sure if it’s worth buying the AWP anymore” said dev1ce on Instagram after beating Big Clan on October 24. His teammate Peter ‘dupreeh’ Rasmussen agreed to Dev1ce on twitter saying “the Krieg meta is getting out of hand” before putting a poll on asking his fans to chose the lesser appreciated one between the AUG Meta and Krieg Meta.

AUG the Counter-Terrorist counterpart to the Krieg rifle is also nowhere near as powerful or inexpensive, with the AUG coming at $3300 and SG significantly low at $2750 giving a slight edge to the Terrorists. The Krieg has been rising in popularity since early 2019 and is now beginning to overtake the AK-47 as the most used gun.

CSGO: Google and FACEIT’s new chat AI successfully bans 20,000 toxic players in six weeks

Souhit Dey
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CSGO: Google and FACEIT’s new chat AI successfully bans 20,000 toxic players in six weeks

By solely analyzing in-game chat messages, the newly implemented Google and FACEIT’s chat AI has banned 20,000 toxic players in its first six weeks since launch.

The AI is named Minerva, it is developed jointly by FACEIT and Google under collaboration. The AI is trained via Machine Learning, it analyzes in-game chats and issues warnings against offensive messages while flagging possible spams. It sends notifications of either bans or warnings as soon as the game ends, and the penalty for repeated offense grows harsher.

The AI was first introduced in August and since then it has issued 90,000 warnings, marked 7,000,000 messages as toxic, and banned 20,000 players. The number of toxic messages dropped by a massive 20% in the period of August to September while the AI was active, and the number of unique players sending toxic messages dropped by 8%.

In a recent blog post, FACEIT said:

“In-game chat detection is only the first and most simplistic of the applications of Minerva and more of a case study that serves as a first step toward our vision for this AI

We’re really excited about this foundation as it represents a strong base that will allow us to improve Minerva until we finally detect and address all kinds of abusive behaviors in real-time.

In the coming weeks we will announce new systems that will support Minerva in her training.”

Entity Gaming Presents ‘Burst Flash Not Ash’

Varun Parashar
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Entity Gaming Presents ‘Burst Flash Not Ash’

Entity Gaming, the Indian esports powerhouse is back with another major announcement this year and it is going to light up this Diwali like never before.

This Diwali, Entity ventures out to do some good for the society using gaming as a medium which simply proves that this diverse art form can be used to bring happiness into people’s lives in unimaginable ways.

Entity Gaming was built with the dream of facilitating the dreams of young gamers across the nation and give wheels to their imagination. They also believe in bringing the same joy to the less fortunate. Keeping that in mind, Entity Gaming presents ‘Burst Flash Not Ash’, a streaming initiative where six of their beloved streamers stream for a total of 12 hours on the 28th of October with all the donations going to Ashray, an orphanage in Bandra West.

They will also be giving away game codes worth $200 courtesy Intel India and 12 HyperX goodie bags. The streamers and their timings are as follows:

  1. Rahul ‘NovaKing’ Dhankar – 10 AM to 12 PM
  2. Prasoon ‘FireFrost’ Pallav – 12 to 2 PM
  3. Ketan ‘K18’ Patel – 2 to 4 PM
  4. Francisco ‘escudo’ Mascarenhas – 4 to 6 PM
  5. Shagufta ‘Xyaa’ Iqbal – 6 to 8 PM
  6. Sunny ‘Deathmaker’ Das – 8 to 10 PM

Visit their Youtube channel to tune into the livestream and provide a helping hand for this great initiative.

Liquid qualify for ECS Season 8 Finals

Sarjyo Mukherjee
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0
Liquid qualify for ECS Season 8 Finals

Liquid book themselves a spot at the ECS Season 8 Finals after a 2-1 victory against ATK in the finals of Week 4.

Liquid had a rough start against INTZ and ex-Singularity with little difficulty in their first two matchups, while their grand final opponents, ATK, faced the likes of eUnited and Complexity. Liquid were without their IGL Nick “nitr0” Cannella as he was out due to personal reasons in the grand final, with coach Eric “adreN” Hoag standing in their pick of Dust2.

After swaying the momentum both ways ATK caught control on the offense as they secure a 10-5 lead at the half. 3 rounds on the second half were secured by ATK to 13-6 scoreline before Liquid went back on the board, Jake “Stewie2K” Yip and Keith “NAF” Markovic’s multi-kill rounds helped to crush ATK’s defense as Liquid went up to eight rounds in a row. ATK stopped Liquid’s streak to force overtime eventually led to a 19-17 victory for ATK.

Starting of Inferno, Liquid were in control at 5-2 before ATK took charge and pulled 9-6 in the first half. Despite ATK responding to Liquid’s pistol round win with a force-buy to initially gain control, Liquid read ATK’s T-side playbook in its entirety as Russel “Twistzz” Van Dulken fine performance helped to shut them down and take the map 16-12.

Overpass was the deciding map, two teams fighting for a grand final spot pushed each other to the end of their limits. Liquid managed to get back from an early 2-5 deficit to win five rounds in a row, but ATK who secured a one-round lead as they went to the offense. A CZ-75 triple kill from Twistzz answered ATK’s pistol win with a force-buy, giving Liquid the chance to gain the lead. Aran “Sonic” Groesbeek picked up four frags on an eco round to keep the hope alive for his team in the running, but ATK were only able to add one more round to their tally before conceding the map 16-11.

Global Esports announces esports partnership with Razer

Abhishek Bajaj
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Global Esports announces esports partnership with Razer

Global Esports continue to push the boundaries and have added another feather to their cap in the form of their newly announced partnership with Razer. The partnership is catered towards Team India and Team Singapore representing their respective countries at the OverWatch World Cup at the annual Blizzard game convention, Blizzon. But, Razer and Global Esports have entered into the partnership with the long-term goal of reaching new heights in the sphere, rather than the short-term view of helping the cause of the representatives at OverWatch World Cup. This is the first official instance of Razer sponsoring an Indian organisation.

The partnership with Razer follows closely the recently announced association of Global Esports with Harrisburg University. The Indian organization announced that, the team-up will entail the formation of a brand new Esports Management Bachelors & Masters degree at HU while also providing access to Indians to complete Esports courses at the said University along with scholarship for pro Esports athletes.

Global Esports have been spreading their wings at a rapid rate since it’s inception. The organization is well represented in the Esports field with 12 teams spread over 9 titles. But, the community upliftment program is also well and truly underway, with Global Esports recruiting several popular Indian streamers. As Esports goes global, so is Global Esports.

StarLadder referee says s1mple rages at his teammates and guardiaN tilts

Raj 'Stan' Shah
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0
StarLadder referee says s1mple rages at his teammates and guardiaN tilts

StarSeries i-League season eight is going on this week, A refree who’s working with StarLadder shared some information about team ‘Natus Vincere’ one of the first CSGO teams to be knocked out of this competition. 

The refree sent two messages on the telegram group right after the match stating information about players from Natus Vincere, Particularly ‘Simple’ was raging at his team mates in game.

‘Guardian’ their primary AWPer was tilting during matches, unable to focus and was missing shots. NaVi’s coach ‘Blad3’ was being toxic to their current IGL ‘Boombl4’.

The refree mentioned:

Simple was responsible for the discipline of the Team and he was raging on them, nobody was stopping him, everyone was so afraid of him, Guardian was tilting so much that he couldn’t kill, they were trapped in this never ending loop

Refree also mentioned ‘Blad3 called a pause and asked Boombl4 to stop being a player and start acting like a captain.

Regardless of all the controversy, nothing has been proven yet, there are no screenshots or any kind of proof attached but Na’Vi did seem lost during this StarSeries iLeague season eight. They lost their line ups against G2 and Heroic, they were visibly upset with their performance especially Simple.

Na’Vi’s former captain ‘Zeus’ retired after the BlastPro series held in Mascow this September. He wasn’t in his best individual form when he retired.  While the spectators thought that Zeus was holding the team back, but if what the refree said is true and the players were lacking the chemistry then maybe its the opposite and zeus was actually holding the team together.

Simple was already known for his toxic behaviour when he was young and after several such incidents, He worked on changing his behaviour which lead him to becoming the best CS:GO player in the world in the year 2018, according to the StarLadder refree simple might have gone back to his old habbits.

The StarLadder refree deleted the Telegram group and no official comments were made by any officials on the matter.

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