Home Blog Page 2033

Extremum ventures into CSGO, signs Russian lineup

Bhavya Shah
-
0
Extremum ventures into CSGO, signs Russian lineup

Extremum, relatively a new name in the esports scene have signed former Quantum Bellator Fire (QBF) and Winstrike Team players — Nikita “waterfaLLZ” Matveyev, Gregory “balbIna” Oleinick and coach Dmitry “iksou” Mikhaylichenko. Former Winstrike players will be joined by three young and upcoming talents from Russia.

Fans will have high expectations from the roster since the half of the roster including the coach had an impressive run at ELEAGUE Major: Boston 2018 and secured 5th-8th position. They went this close all the way through CIS open qualifiers for the major. Later, the lineup was signed by Winstrike Team, however, the performance began declining.

The team is currently reported to be practicing at a bootcamp in Saint Petersburg, Russia.

Extremum CS:GO roster is:

Nikita “waterfaLLZ” Matveyev (Captain)
Gregory “balbIna” Oleinick
Aleksey “TaLkeR” Eroshkin
Vitaly “vitosh” Orischenko
Sergey “airscape” Marochkin

Dmitry “iksou” Mikhaylichenko (Coach)

Japan to host world’s first esports tournament for differently abled

Prateek Jain
-
1
Japan to host world’s first esports tournament for differently abled

In a bid to raise awareness about disabled gaming, Japan will be hosting the world’s first disabled-friendly League Of Legends tournament during the Gunma Esports Festival in Japan. Four teams of five players each will be competing with each other for a prize of one million yen. The teams will only consist of gamers that aren’t able-bodied and will be provided with all necessary equipments.

The fact that esports and gaming is not limited to able-bodied is what makes this tournament unique and first of its kind.

Many companies have also come forward with idea and products that makes gaming for differently-abled gamers easier and more accessible. Like Microsoft launched a special Xbox Adaptive Controller which adapts to the needs of the individual and is highly customisable making gaming for differently-abled gamers easier.

While some may say that competitive esports is only limited to able-bodied participants as esports athletes need to be in top form. But this is where the lack of awareness arises. There are many ways by which a differently-abled gamer can compete in games and in some cases even out skills the able-bodied players.

With tournaments like this, Japan and the organisers aims to raise awareness about the talented differently-able gamers that can even compete in high skilled tournaments that are exclusive to abled-bodied gamers. The event is set to take place on the 31st August and will be a part of the ongoing Esports Festival. It is organised by Onelife Inc, a company that provides adaptive equipments for the players in order to better be able to use the devices needed to play.

$500,000 Apex Legends preseason invitational tournament announced

Prateek Jain
-
5
$500,000 Apex Legends preseason invitational tournament announced

Recently, EA and Respawn entertainment made a joint announcement about the upcoming Lan event for Apex Legends which will feature a prize pool of $500K. The event will be held in Kraków, Poland from September 13th to 15th.

The event will feature 80 of the world’s best Apex Legends teams playing in a double-elimination bracket This event will be held ahead of Season 3 launch and Respawn may share more details about the upcoming Season 3 in the event.

This preseason invitational event will be the first major esports tournament for Apex Legends as the game only had small scale invitational events and Twitch Rivals events before.

EA might be feeling the burn of Fortnite chugging off all the popularity of Apex Legends and after the success of Fortnite World Cup the pressure might be on EA to keep Apex Legends alive and interesting for the audience or they might lose the game.

According to EA, this invitational is just the start of the plan that they have in mind for Apex Legends Esports scene and they will be expanding the scene even more and in future, we may see regular events of such scale.

Todd Sitrin, SVP and GM of the EA Competitive Gaming Division said:

Today we officially expand EA Competitive Gaming through the addition of Apex Legends, owner of one of the biggest game launches in history. The Apex Legends Preseason Invitational is the key next step in our esports journey.

How to play in Apex Legends preseason invitational:

For anyone interested to play in the event have a chance on winning half a million prize pool then they just need to send their team details to [email protected] with associated Origin IDs of players and associated email address.

Respawn will then select the teams for the tournament, but the criteria for selection is unclear at the time. Teams must consist of 3 players and all of them should be 16 years and above in age. (Japan-17 years, Germany/Russia/South Korea – 18 years).

The invitational will be played on PC only and each team will need to confirm their roster by September 2, 2019.

The Complete Team List for Starladder Berlin Major 2019

Abhishek Bajaj
-
0
The Complete Team List for Starladder Berlin Major 2019

The stage is set and the teams have been confirmed for the entire phase of the Starladder Berlin Major 2019. The Minors have ended with 8 teams earning qualification for the New Challenger Stage at the Major. The Play-In has also conferred upon 3 teams the right to enter the Main Qualifying Stage at Berlin.

But, first, let us name the teams that will not be competing in the Main Qualifiers or the New Challengers Stage. These are the teams that had progressed to the Quarter-Finals at Katowice and are hence, automatically through to the New Legends Stage or the Main Stage of the Starladder Berlin Major.

Returning Legends

Astralis
ENCE
Liquid
Natus Vincere
Ninjas in Pyjamas
Renegades
mibr
Faze Clan

Now, we come to the teams that did not manage to qualify to the knockouts at Katowice. But, these teams managed at least 1 win at the Main Stage of the Katowice Major and have, as a result, qualified directly for the New Challengers Stage at the Starladder Berlin Major.

Returning Challengers

Vitality
G2
Complexity
AVANGAR
HellRaisers

Eight spots at the New Challengers Stage were decided through the four Regional Minors that took place.

Starladder Berlin Major: Minor Qualifiers

NRG
FURIA
mousesports
CR4ZY
Grayhound
TYLOO
forZe
Syman

The remaining 3 spots were decided via the Minor Play-In. The third-placed teams from each Regional Minor made their way to the Play-In to fight for the 3 spots.

Starladder Berlin Major: Play-In Qualifiers

North
DreamEaters
INTZ

This completes the list of teams that will be seen at the Starladder Berlin Major. Who do you think will take the crown away from Astralis? Or will the Danes correct their incumbencies to retain their title?

Stewie2K, dev1ce, NBK, dephh, Kjaerbye, DonHaci among others who reacted to Fortnite World Cup

Bhavya Shah
-
1
Stewie2K, dev1ce, NBK, dephh, Kjaerbye, DonHaci among others who reacted to Fortnite World Cup

CS:GO community is once again enraged and this time it’s Fortnite World Cup being the cause. With whopping $30 Million USD prize pool for the world cup, and even Dota 2’s The International’s prize pool has crossed $30 Million, CS:GO community is not quite happy with the developers. On the contrary, being the oldest and most user-friendly esport with heavy viewership, CS:GO’s most prominent tournament, the valve sponsored major, is capped at $1 Million.

A thread titled, “Valve: Let us crowdfund majors” was heavily upvoted and several heated arguments took place, however, Valve has remained ignorant about it. “It’s pathetic that a consumer would ask a company to humbly allow them to pay the money they should be providing,” commented a user.

Unlike Dota 2, CS:GO community does not crowdfund events, however, the community purchases stickers, graffiti, etc. and half the money is directly transferred to the players. Meaning that the community does not actually crowdfund the events but they definitely contribute towards teams’ earnings.

16-year-old Bugha who won $3 Million USD in the Fortnite World Cup has surpassed lifetime earnings of various CS:GO pro players for nearly a decade or have won multiple majors including — Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz, Jake “Stewie2K Yip, Gabriel “FalleN” Toledo, Olof “olofmeister” Kajbjer, Filip “NEO” Kubski, Nathan “NBK” Schmitt.

Several CS:GO celebrities reacted to the Fortnite World Cup held last weekend. Jake “Stewie2K” was quite critical about Bugha winning $3M USD while Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz congratulated the winners and applauded the game bringing masses closer to video games. Nathan “NBK” Schmitt was quite amused by the prize pool. Rory “dephh” Jackson said he doesn’t like the game but he appreciated what it has been doing for gaming fraternity. Markus “Kjaerbye” Kjærbye shared a light moment criticising CS:GO major’s comparatively less prize pool, while DonHaci criticized Fortnite’s RNG mechanism.

Valve still hasn’t responded, however, fans await.

‘Get Good’ by Ninja coming to book stores near you

Prateek Jain
-
0
‘Get Good’ by Ninja coming to book stores near you

Tyler “Ninja” Blevins whose rise to fame was witnessed by almost everyone is back again with another venture outside of gaming. This time is he writing a set of books ( 3 in total) about how to become an “unstoppable” gaming machine. A book that can help a scrub becomes ‘Pro’.

The books are set to release in August this year and Ninja promises to reveal several hardworking tips in his first book “Ninja: Get Good”. These tips include basics such as practising with purpose, using best equipments, developing streaming strategy, etc. The 2ndbook will be titled “Ninja Notebook” and come with stickers, prompts and more of such gaming tips.

Later he also worked illustrator Felipe Magaña and writer Justin Jordan in making a graphic novel entitled “Ninja: The Most Dangerous Game” which will be the 3rd book in the series. The setting of the novel beings with Ninja receiving a mysterious email inviting him to “an impossibly realistic, challenging and addictive game.”

“As the best player in the world, Ninja’s unable to resist a challenge and soon discovers that there’s more to this game than meets the eye. Teleported into the battle royale’s universe, a digitized Ninja must start from scratch, finding a way to win the game—and save the world. Along the way, he meets valuable friends and ultimately fulfils a destiny larger than he ever could have imagined. Set in a fictional world created by notable comics writer Justin Jordan and comics artist Felipe Magaña, this is the first in a graphic novel series that offers a new way for Ninja fans of all ages to experience the gaming streamer’s unmatched wits and skill”

For Ninja, this isn’t the first time he venturing into things other than gaming where he talks about his own experiences. Before he was involved in making a full-time Online Course with Udemy about Twitch streaming and how to get started.

He was also featured in this year’s YouTube rewind which was themed after Fortnite, although that rewind video is known as worst and most disliked video of YouTube. But still Tyler remains one of the most popular Fortnite figure till date and can still manage a huge number of viewers on his streams.

These books will be published by publisher Clarkson Potter and are available to pre-order online at Penguin Random House.

Fortnite World Champion Bugha beats Tiger Woods in earnings

Prateek Jain
-
3
Fortnite World Champion Bugha beats Tiger Woods in earnings

The Fortnite World Cup 2019 featured a prize pool of $30 million in total. The winner of the Sunday finale, Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf was awarded with a staggering $3 million in prize money. After winning the World Cup alone he was able to outearn most sports athletes from sports such as Tennis, Golf, etc.

According to a graph posted by ESPN, Bugha was able to earn more prize money than Wimbledon Champion Novak Djokovic, 2019 Masters Tiger Woods and 2019 PGA Brooks Koepka. All of these were major tournaments in their respective fields in 2019 and Bugha’s winning surpassed some of them by a huge margin.

Fortnite World Cup 2019 had one of the largest prize pools seen in any esports tournament and the winner was bound to get a huge sum of that shared $30 million prize pool. With winning the World Cup 2019 alone Bugha was able to list himself in top 10 most earning esports player of all time (tournament winnings only).

Epic the makers of Fortnite also announced on July 28th about the competitive circuit coming to the game in season 10 called the Fortnite Championship Series, which will feature prize pool of its own and will be open for everyone to participate. This series will later lead to World Cup 2 where we hope Epic to have the similar $30 million prize pool.

Although not enough details of the Series were revealed but one thing is certain that Epic is trying to keep the game interesting by increasing prize pool which will also act as boost for the esports scene.

Fortnite World Cup champion Bugha featured on The Tonight Show

Prateek Jain
-
1
Fortnite World Cup champion Bugha featured on The Tonight Show

Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf, a 16-year old US teenager is in the news after he won the Fortnite World Cup-winning a staggering $3 million in prize money. Following his victory, Bugha made an appearance on “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” to talk about his victory lap.

The Tonight Show is one of the biggest shows in USA and is very popular among all age groups. Whenever an athlete wins a major sports event, they tend to make appearances on Tonight Show. With Bughawinning a tournament of such scale his mainstream fame was bound to skyrocket and so was he invited by Jimmy Fallon to appear on the show on July 29th.

Other guests for The Tonight Show with Bugha’s appearance included Rachel Brosnahan, Carla Gugino and Ty Dolla $ign.

Fortnite is one of the most popular game on the planet with everyone talking about it. Almost everyone knows about the game and were curious to know how a normal teenager from the USA is able to earn millions by playing a game.

This is were Bugha comes in. People were eager to know his side of story on how he was able to win a tournament of such scale. Hopefully, he was able to explain about esports and/or Fortnite to a wider audience such that some will accept gaming as a genuine profession and won’t look down on those who game as a profession. This might also change the view of some parents of gaming and they might allow their teenage kids to play games freely.

Either way, Fortnite and esports aren’t slowing down anytime soon and Bugha is just getting on the tracks of it. It will be interesting to see how Bugha is going to handle the fans and fame he is getting after the tournament victory. But no matter what comes nobody can take away his accomplishment at the World Cup and change the fact that he is one of the top 10 highest earning esports players.

Mom thought I wasted time: 15-yr-old on winning ₹7.7 cr in gaming

Prateek Jain
-
1
Mom thought I wasted time: 15-yr-old on winning ₹7.7 cr in gaming

Jaden Ashman from Essex, UK won approximately $2.25 million after coming in second place in Duos sections of Fortnite World Cup 2019. The 15-year-old will be sharing this prize money with his Dutch partner, Dave Jong.

Fortnite World Cup 2019was a 3-day-long tournament with a $30 million prize money and was held inside the Arthur Ashe Tennis Stadium in Flushing Meadows, New York. The finals were played out on Sunday where players from more than 30 countries competed for the winner’s trophy and prize.

Jaden Ashman with mother Lisa Dallman who said they had had a ‘nightmare’ arguing over his gaming

Jaden was present with his parents cheering for him from side-lines. Later in an interview to BBC, Jaden said :

Me and my mum, we clash quite a lot. Like, she didn’t understand how it worked, so she thought that I was spending eight hours a day in my room just wasting my time.So now that I’ve proved to her that I can do stuff, I’m really happy.

Despite the resistance from his mother, Lisa Dallman, Jaden competed for online qualifiers with Dave Jong and was later invited to the main tournament to compete for Duos event.

Lisa Dallman told BBC :

If I’m honest with you I’ve been quite against him gaming. I’ve been more pushing him to his schoolwork.I’ve actually thrown an Xbox out, snapped a headset, we’ve had a nightmare.And then leading up to the games, getting his visa, we had problems with that so we had a week of a nightmare.Then the dog ate his birth certificate, so – and this is not a joke – this actually really did happen.And then my work messed up my wages, so three things went wrong before we started heading here so I knew we were on an even keel and everything was going to go right.

Later when asked about the prize money she said:

I think Jaden’s not really a materialistic person. He will have a lifetime supply of Uber Eats, and I think that will do him, to be fair.Just sitting there playing video games and eating takeaways, Jaden would be in his element.

The competition in the Fortnite World Cup was high with many veterans from big organizations also participating. These big organizations pay monthly salaries to their players and also provide them with almost all resources needed so that their players are always able to perform their best. Still with such circumstances, Jaden managed to secure 2nd place.

Parents should encourage their kids and support them. Esports is a very big and lucrative market now. Many players are able to earn a decent amount of money from just competing in tournaments and also have another opportunity to grow bigger and earn more. So the old taboo of gaming being time waste is just false in today’s world and parents shouldn’t discourage kids from playing.

BTRG signs Indonesian star xccurate

Bhavya Shah
-
1
BTRG signs Indonesian star xccurate

After a period of a year and an half with TyLoo, Indonesian star-AWPer is finally set to resume his journey with Big Time Regal Gaming (BTRG). He was earlier benched by TyLoo after the organisation signed WingHei “Freeman” Cheung in June earlier this year. Kevin “xccurate” Susanto was signed by the Chinese firebrand in early 2018 and the lineup produced excellent results. But, as we entered 2019, the roster lost it’s charm and the results began to fade away.

WingHei’s tenure with TyLoo for 18 months led to various laudable results. The lineup won Asian qualifier for IEM Katowice 2018, DreamHack Marseille 2018, DreamHack Masters Stockholm, StarLadder i-League Season 6, ESL Pro League Season 9 Finals and won StarLadder & ImbaTV Invitational Chongqing 2018 XINHUA Electronic Sports Conference, Asian Development League 2018 – Season 1. While the team displayed noteworthy effort at IEM Sydney 2018, Qi Invitational, CS:GO Asia Championship 2018, IEM Shanghai 2018 and TOYOTA Master CS:GO Bangkok 2018.

Big Time Regal Gaming (BTRG) has benched 21-year-old BinJie “Cate” Wang to pave way for xccurate. After this change, BTRG’s CS:GO roster is:

Anthony “ImpressioN” Lim
Adrian “adrnkiNg” Setiawan
ZhiTao “Drea3er” Zhang
Kristjan “fejtZ” Allsaar
Kevin “xccurate” Susanto

Yan “start” Zhang (coach)

1...2,0322,0332,034...2,186Page 2,033 of 2,186