TALKESPORT

The newly formed brazilian team just announced through their twitter that the team, will not be attenting ELEAGUE Boston Major 2018 due to “immigration issues”.

The organisation stated in a follow-up tweet that they “worked incredibly hard with industry-leading immigration lawyers since the day we signed the players to get them here with plenty of time to spare.”

We are disappointed to share that due to immigration issues, the 100 Thieves CS:GO team will not be attending the upcoming Boston major. It goes without saying that this is devastating for the players and for us. We are truly sorry for them and their fans.

— 100 Thieves (@100Thieves) January 13, 2018

ELEAGUE has just confirmed that, “unfortunately, 100Thieves has not been able to secure visas in time to be eligible to compete in The ELEAGUE Major: Boston. We will identify a replacement through the use of decider matches, formatted in collaboration with Valve, that will include the team(s) finishing The New Challenger stage with a 2-3 record who also faced the strongest performing opponents. The team to perform the best in the decider match(es) will replace 100Thieves in The New Legends stage set to begin Friday, Jan. 19, at 10 a.m. ET on Twitch. ”

The Eleague major would have been the first LAN debut for the brazilian lineup :

• Henrique “HEN1” Teles
• Vito “kNgV-” Giuseppe
• Lucas “LUCAS1” Teles
• Lincoln “fnx” Lau
• Bruno “bit” Lima

Their replacement will be drafted out of the teams with a 2-3 record, as announced by ELEAGUE shortly after their withdrawal. This will be done through the method of, at least one, decider match between the teams that “faced the strongest performing opponents.”

Former Red Reserve player and one of the best AWPer Mikail “Maikelele” Bill  announced his return to professional competitive CS:GO scene, yesterday in a Twitch Stream.

Maikelele said that he will be forming a team with, the three time major winner and former GODSENT captain Markus “pronax” Wallsten, Ninjas in Pyjamas stand-in Jacob “pyth” Mourujärvi, and former Fnatic Academy star Aleksandr “JayzaR” Zarkovic. Joakim “jkaem” Myrbostad is a possible fifth that he’d like to field for his first team of the year, but he also mentioned that he has been in touch with Dennis too.

After departing from Red Reserve last August, maikelele took a big step back from his competitive career. His career has become somewhat of a meme, because of his frequent team formations, like Red Reserve, followed by his removal from that same team a short time later.

“I miss the tournaments. I miss the hype. I miss having a team. The feeling of having a team is something else,” Maikelele said on stream. “The absolute best feeling is when you’re at a tournament in a booth … and your whole team is just so fucking concentrated … and ready to play. I’m getting goosebumps [talking about it].” he said it in his vod.

Maikelele currently does not have any organisation backing his new team up, he will be looking forward to start collecting funds from streaming, although it’s impossible for him to fund his entire team. As far as this is concerned, I think he will get picked up by organisations who recently dropped their team such as Epsilon Esports.

Even though, it was not an official announcement of the team, Maikelele stated that the following four “will start playing with each other, 110%” :

• Mikail “Maikelele” Bill
• Markus “pronax” Wallsten
• Jacob “pyth” Mourujärv
• Aleksandr “jayzaR” Zarkovic

The U.S. based internet giant Google has reportedly invested into Chinese mobile game live streaming platform Chushou. The Beijing-based startup already has Qiming Ventures, Alpha X Capital as its backers. After Series D funding round, the capital now totals to $120 million for Chushou.

The last Chushou funding, announced almost exactly one year ago, was $58 million and prior to that, it had raised about $20 million. According to TechCrunch the Chinese media reports last week, which put Chushou’s new round at 500 million RMB (about $77 million), weren’t accurate.

Earlier reports suggest that Google has inducted close to $61 million in Chushou.

In a press statement, Frank Lin, Google’s principal of corporate development in north Asia, said “Chushou has built an impressive platform, with a dedicated and quickly growing base of content creators and consumers, and smart expansion plans. We’re excited to be supporting Chushou through this investment to help them execute those plans, bringing great mobile gaming content to more people around the world.”

Chushou claims to have close to ten million streamers, with concurrent users hitting 2,50,000 every day. Among the thousand supported games, ninety million gamers are registered users, making the platform one of the largest active gaming online community in China.

Astralis’s Nicolai “dev1ce” Reedtz affirmed via web-based networking media that he will come back to dynamic competition play with his group Astralis, which is uplifting news for all aficionados of the Danish side. Conveying the Legend status from Krakow, Astralis are slated to play at the ELEAGUE Major in the not so distant future, however they were nearly contending with a huge impede.

Dev1ce have been on rest since IEM Oakland following sickness and must be supplanted by a modest bunch of players in Astralis’ next competitions: “dennis” Edman for BLAST Pro Series and Ruben “RUBINO” Villarroel at EPL Season 6 finals.

In spite of playing with untested lists, Astralis took second on home turf at BLAST, however couldn’t pull together for a decent arrangement at EPL, leaving the gatherings as 9-tenth.

Had dev1ce’s restorative issues not been settled, the group would’ve needed to play with mentor Danny “zonic” Sørensen — a reasonable drawback and difficulty thinking about the high stakes of the Major.

With the AWPer back in shape, nonetheless, this takes Astralis back to being one of the fundamental top choices for the title, particularly thinking about the condition of their greatest adversaries.

The most sizzling group towards the finish of 2017, SK Gaming, are going to with a secured João “felps” Vasconcellos (according to Valve rules) rather than Ricardo “boltz” Prass, the last of whom helped the Brazilians to their last couple of titles.

Legends, for example, Fnatic, Virtus.pro G2A and Gambit Esports have additionally been battling, while any semblance of FaZe Clan and G2 Esports need to survive the Challengers Stage first where anything can happen.

The ELEAGUE Major will commence Jan. 12 in Atlanta and proceed till Jan. 28, moving to the Agganis Arena in Boston for the playoffs organize.

Tyloo and Luis “Peacemaker” Tadeu released official statements relating TyLoo’s absence from the Major, and the stories from both of them is pretty interesting.

As announced, TyLoo will not be attending the Boston Major because Valve put Hansel “BnTeT” Ferdinand’s player autograph sticker into the game instead of Peacemaker’s. A failed agreement between TyLoo and Peacemaker resulted in TyLoo to skip this Major. As Valve and ELEAGUE also played minor roles in the sticker controversy.

Not official, but I heard Valve is saying that coaches shouldnt have signatures in the game even if they have to stand in for their respective team

1) Why does Valve even collect a 6th man signature at first place then?
2) What if coach becomes a player then?

Unreal.

— Luis Peacemaker (@peacemaker) December 20, 2017

According to TyLoo Peacemaker was “reluctant to attend” the Major unless he was given a portion of the organization’s sticker profits. As he asked for a percentage of TyLoo’s profits, mainly because BnTeT’s sticker was in the game instead of his confirmed by Jared “DeKay” Lewis from a report.

BnTeT could not attend the Boston Major because he was denied a visa for travel to the U.S. Peacemaker also claims that “Valve accepted his player autograph sticker submission prior to the initial sticker release.

As peacemaker came to know that he won’t be having his personal sticker, he ostensibly asked for an adjustment from TyLoo regarding his stipend as a player, instead of as a coach. But for the sake of TyLoo’s player’s peacemaker decided to drop his compensation. But TyLoo allegedly decided that it’d rather miss the Major than playing with the Brazilian coach at the event – statement came out indirectly from TyLoo, according to Peacemaker.

TyLoo finally decided to step out from the major, resulting Flash Gaming to replace them in the Challenger stage. Flash Gaming’s stickers were added to CS:GO last night by Valve, while TyLoo’s stickers have become coveted items on the Steam community market.

ASUS Republic of Gamers (ROG) has reportedly invested $16 million to set up an esports headquarter in mainland China, according to multiple Chinese news outlets.

The Taiwanese technology company’s subsidiary will be named “Huajing Culture Media Co., Ltd.” and will focus on the development of esports in the country.

Jerry Shen, ASUS’ CEO, said that the company’s business in China will not be “limited to esports product sales, but instead, ASUS aims to create its own esports industry,” news outlet YT Sports reports.

Therefore it is assumed the company wants to get involved with ticket sales, event organization, and player training

As part of its new Chinese esports project, ROG launched an esports team, called Rogue Warriors.

ASUS is thus trying to conquer China, a market with an estimated 72 million esports enthusiasts. According to ASUS’ latest annual report (covering 2016), the revenues from the Chinese market are equal to 18 percent of the total company yearly revenues of $429 billion NTD (around $14.5 billion USD).

ROG has been actively involved in esports for a number of years.

The brand is partnered with over 20 teams, including NRG Esports, SK Telecom T1, and Echo Fox, while it is the name sponsor of ROG female, a CS:GO team from the Czech Republic.

The company even ran ROG Masters, a cross-continent CS:GO and Dota 2 tournament, in 2017, with a combined prize pool of $500,000.

Originally appeared on Esports Observer.