In a disheartening turn of events for the 23 year old professional Call of Duty gamer Phillip ‘Phizzurp’ Klemenov. It is believed that Phizzurp passed away in a horrific car accident this morning.
A player belonging to H2k, Phizzurp was streaming only hours ago before being succumbed to serious injuries.News of his death reached to the media this morning via his girlfriend who shared an emotional video explaining the whole situation.
Alcohol and over-speeding is believed to be the cause of this tragic accident said Sgt. Baumfalk from the Aura Police Department. According to the officers, a black Infinity vehicle lost control and ended up on the sidewalk via several trees and a light pole.
Other than Philip, his girlfriend Adrianna was occupied in the car which faced a major accident. “Phil lost control of the car, we flipped into a pole and through three trees. I was the only one that was conscious and I just want to let you guys know. He was a great guy he did not deserve this. Phil is such a good man and I loved him so much. He was so kind,” said Adrianna.
Our blessings goes to Philip’s family and friends who are right now in a shock state.
Valve today released the latest version of the game with jumping accuracy fixes and a long-seen update on major rifle sounds. The update is an answer to the community criticism of the inaccuracy of weapons such as SSG08 and Mag-7 mid-air.
The update – 37.3 MB – also marks the final round of sound changes of the weapons. AK-47, M4-A1 and M4-A4 will now have a new audible mechanism in the game.
After we revealed Valve’s plan to not have another major this year. ELEAGUE has now announced that they will be taking charge of hosting the first CSGO major of 2017. The ELEAGUE major will be held from 22nd to 29th January 2017.
The tenth CSGO major will be a part of Valve’s annual million dollar mega-fest and ELEAGUE’s first. The ELEAGUE major will feature $1 million prize pool.
ELEAGUE Season 1 trophy
The ELEAGUE major will feature eight eliminated teams from ESL Cologne 2016 and another set of 8 teams which will be determined through regional minor qualifiers. The final battle will be played between the eight legends from the previous major and the eight teams which get qualified through the major qualifiers at the ELEAGUE theaters from 15th to 18th December in Atlanta.
The joint 16 teams will compete for the CSGO major championship, the event will be broadcasted on both Twitch and TBS networks. This will mark the first Valve Major to have ever been aired live on television networks.
“When we launched ELEAGUE, we set out to deliver a best-in-class experience for esports teams, players, and fans and we’re grateful to the entire community for their ongoing support and engagement with our content. Less than one year since ELEAGUE’s debut, we’re thrilled to host the next CS:GO Major Championship and we will utilize all of our collective resources to help further elevate this prestigious event.” – Lenny Daniels, President of Turner Sports.
ELEAGUE Major
ELEAGUE will host CS:GO Major Championship event from Sunday through Wednesday, Jan. 22-25, with Fox Theatre as the host venue, Friday through Sunday, Jan. 27-29.
Over a million rupees got traded at the MountainDew’s DewArena festival at the Kingdom of Dreams, Gurgaon on 25th of September in the groundbreaking new event which set a benchmark for the gaming events in India. PepsiCo., the company behind the beverage Mountain Dew, concluded the event swiftly as they handed over the prize cheques totaling to Rs. 10,00,000 INR.
The reporting time to the venue on the final day was 09:00 AM in the morning, the teams, journalists, analysts, casters and the whole crew were asked to report. The doors to the arena opened at 11:00 for the regular attendees. The venue, Kingdom Of Dreams (KOD) was in itself a remarkable achievement for an industry as fragmented as ours. The arena was one of the theaters of KoD, Showshaa Theatre. The lights, ambiance, and the stage looked unanimously magnificent.
Opening Ceremony
The prominent host for Gadgets360, NDTV, Mr. Rajeev Makhni took the responsibility and conducted the opening ceremony at the event. The hydraulic stage entry extensively supported the mood of the people. Naseeb Puri, the Director of Mountain Dew, was also present at the venue for the entire time. She looked tongue-tied watching the setup and enthusiastically competitive gathering.
Dew Arena gaming championship which regarding in partnership with ESL India which got overwhelming numbers regarding registrations. More than 75,000 gamers registered for the India’s largest gaming championship compared to the predicted records of not more than 35,000.
“We are delighted with the response to Dew Arena, which has made it India’s biggest gaming championship ever. Gaming in India is gaining increasing popularity across platforms, and we hope that Dew Arena will give a welcome impetus to spurring the growth of this genre and helping celebrate our heroes like never before,” saidNaseeb Puri, Director-Mountain Dew, PepsiCo India.
People started to turn in for the event at around 12, and the games went live from 13:00 after a few uninvited technical glitches delayed the game. There were 26 finalists from all the different games. The stage was well set for the entry of the participants such that they had their best moments. The hydraulic stage arrival was one of the finest ceremonies I have ever witnessed. The charm on the face of the participants said it all. They earned it!
The highlights
DewArena had those classy details, and the venue was decorated to look like an international esports event. The top quality management of lights and on-screen visuals added a lot to the overall experience of the visitors.
The green theme; It was these greenish lights all over the stadium, of course, it had to be to the set the tone of the mountain dew theme,
Invisible Wings and Beyond Infinity end their journey on a peak as they look forward to their new organization, Entity Esports,
Bari Naseer Anwar, the IGL of Beyond Infinity retires from competitive esports,
Simar ‘psy’ Sethi along with Raunak ‘Crowley’ Sen will soon be seen on the bottle of MountainDew’s GameFuel,
Karthik Gopal’s stunning impersonation capabilities of superhero voices,
The event used the international standard noise-cancellation headphones to eliminate any conflicts during the game’s live shout cast,
The special guest from Flipsid3 Tactics had a valuable experience at the event.
The games
Street Fighter 4 was the first game to begin the grand finals. The game even pulled some nostalgic childhood moments for most of the crowd. In a best of three regulation of the match, Syed Ahmad Kamal came on top who beat his opponent 2-1. Street Fighter 4 is that kind of game which we have played for at least once in our lifetime, the game successfully adorned the atmosphere of the arena. The second set aligned was DotA 2 between Invisible Wings and Beyond Infinity (both merged into one, now called Entity Esports; read more). The game was cast by Veewak and CloudX from AFKGaming. The first map of the match had its moments with Invisible Wings dominantly winning over their counterparts. The second game even was close, but in the end, Beyond Infinity took it in their favor propelling the grand finals to have a third face-off between the two.
Invisible Wings won the final game and took home the significant share of the pool.
The next game was Forza; it attracted more viewers because of the nature of the match. The racing extinct we all have inside us, the crowd was cheering every time there was a significant drift. Even this was a best of three maps, where Khyat Kanda took it all after the scores leveled at 1-1 in the first two rounds of the game.
FIFAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!
Cosplayers
Among all the several cosplayers present at the venue, Iron-Wolverine had the most innovative dressing and features to the suit. Thus, he was declared the winner!
Energetic ambiance at the arena
Whenever it comes to football, Indians don’t disappoint in ‘cheering’ the people up. Such was the aura of the crowd inside Dew Arena when the two last participants faced-off. Running to score more goals from left to right, the atmosphere got uplifted by the crowd as they were committed entirely to the game. Whenever the ball was near the penalty box, the audience would go mad screaming, “GOAL GOAL GOAL!”. The FIFA match was fun to watch as it replicated the most argued battleship. It was between Ronaldo and Messii!!
Bari retires from competitive gaming after DewArena.
FIFA championship was conquered by Mohammad Farhan who flew from Bangalore to attend this mega-fest, he got a championship achievement after his name and Rs. 75,000 in the bank!
The last but not the least game played, the most intense we call India’s most favorite FPS game, Counter Strike: Global Offensive. The hype surged to the maximum level for the entire day when it was announced that the teams would take their place and the games begin in less than 30 minutes. It was about to be one hell of a match as Invisible Wings were facing their best rivals Team Brutality fighting for dignity prominently. The CS:GO event was responsibly taken care of by the folks at SoStronk with Anish Nemz on the server side and Anand Shanker at the production, Sudhen ‘Bleh’ Wahengbam and Prashant ‘Aequetias’ Prabhakar delivered excellent casting and analysis for the finals.
The first map played was Mirage which is known to be Brutality’s best map. It was pretty one-sided affair for grand finals as Brutality comfortably won the game by 16-7 leaving Invisible Wings in a stature of do or die. The second map and the following one looked scary for the Brutals, a map as strong as train favoring the Invisible Wings side and the final map (if there was any) de_nuke, on which both teams have not been great. The second map which was supposed to be favoring the Invisible Wings side engraved the predicted outcome but in a pretty unexpected root. The game was so close and intense that it drove the people in the audience right into the rough streets as they were booing Brutals side and cheering Invisible Wings (psy being an IGL or Invisible Wings is a Delhi resident, hence the home team). V3nom played out of his mind for the entire map by starting off an ace in the right second round. The game, however, ended for Invisible Wings after Simar ‘psy’ Sethi stood up for his team alongside Mithil ‘MilthilF’ Sawant.
Simar ‘psy’ Sethi looked tense after losing the first map against Brutality
The third and the final map of the game was Nuke, on which we have not seen Brutality performed earlier but we did see Invisible Wings losing 1-16 against Destructive 5 a couple of days ago at the ESWC 2016 semi-finals. The face-off was pretty well balanced between the two side; they were scoring back and forth. Invisible Wings, however, did manage to eliminate Brutality at the later stage of the map in both occasions. What we could gather from the game was that Brutality were unable to close the matches in their favor even though having a marginal lead against the IW side.
Invisible Wings after winning the DotA 2 championship won the grand finals of DewArena CS:GO as well, beating Brutality 2-1. The majority of the prize pool was entitled to them.
The Winners
Games
Winners
Counter Strike: Global Offensive
Invisible Wings
DotA 2
Invisible Wings
Forza Motorsport
Khyat Kanda
FIFA
Mohammad Farhan
Street Fighter
Syed Ahmad Kamal
Winners of CS:GO Invisible Wings
Winners of DotA 2: Invisible Wings
Winner of FIFA 16
Winner of Street Fighter 4
Winner of Forza Motorsport 6
The production and the crew
It was all lead by Gautam Virk, the production head at NODWIN Gaming at the Dew Arena LAN finals. It takes an efficient team to deliver the event at such perfection with precision. The guys at NODWIN surely had their mindset clear during the preparation and planning of the event. The crew at DewArena was pretty big and segmented into different groups each looking after their section of the event. The duties were well fulfilled by everyone present at the event, be it the casters, hosts or the admins for the game. The lead in-house crew of Dew Arena was:
Anup Dustakar
Gautam Virk
Aorin Shariyari
Shefali Johnson
Vageesh K. Bhan
Vishal Gupta
Kanwardeep Singh
People failed to turn up
We can’t be on the both sides of the coins; such is your stand when it comes to the development of eSports in India. You can’t be complaining and not attending the event in your city at the same time. The central region of the country disappointed when it came to joining hands and force the change. People didn’t care to be at the venue. It was far from being houseful even when the capacity of the auditorium was below 300. An even of this caliber which saw massive registration numbers of over 75,000 failed to gather audience at the finals? The numbers will look naive if I tell you the concurrent viewers at the venue.
Thankful to those who turned in even though without having the proper knowledge about the game.
The maximum number of spectators which recorded during FIFA – CSGO was roughly around 70! At one point in time during the DotA 2 game, it was so frustrating to see a crowd of not more than 24 people. And statistically, the crew (including media, participants, shout casters and production team) of the event was substantially higher than the number of the spectators. I can understand that the scarcity was due to the lack of promotion and being particular about the venue before the event. But when there was the young audience at the venue some with their families and some with non-gamers colleagues, was it a tough job for us as gamers to find out about India’s largest gaming festival and be present there to witness it live?
The answer, of course, is no, and the harsh reality is we as “gamers” don’t care and don’t intend to indulge to support something which needs one. The event was so well organized and deserved to be action-packed. But spectators failed to be there. Surprisingly thousands turned into the live streams to enjoy at the back of their monitor screens. Imagine what will it take to replicate another event of the same level. Would you support something with millions of rupees when the auditorium has 50 people? From a general perspective and as a spectator, it looked like that the event was executed in not less than INR 1 crore and it on-site there were 500+ people in the entire day, take your time and calculate the cost of one attendee.
Team NeckBreak, the Indian representer at Point Blank International Championship, PBIC have beaten teams from North America and Singapore.
Piercing Blow, the one-year-old online FPS battle free-to-play game which has over 100 million active gamers in 70 different countries had a major tournament organized in Thailand. A total of 13 teams from 12 different nations were invited to play at this $100,000 event held at Central World Live, Bangkok, Thailand.
Each team from Brazil, India, Indonesia, Europe, Korea, North America, Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Turkey, Venezuela and two from Thailand were present at the international two-day event which was scheduled on 24th of September. The teams were drawn into two different groups where India was placed in Group B alongside five other teams.
The event followed round-robin format where each team played with their fellow teams of each group, teams resting in group A had to play six games whereas group B teams played five games each. In both the groups, teams from Thailand, Mango and Ozone were undefeated in their 11 games as they both topped their respective groups A and B.
Team NeckBREAK, who are known to the community for their dominant participation in CS:GO and DotA 2 were participating in the event with the following roster:
Swapnil “PsykovskY” Gavand
Jainish “sHui*” Zobalia
Rohin “b0nZ1” Dhatingan
Himesh “c|0n3” Nepani
Gaurav “ZoZo” Sharma
Team NeckBreak were able to beat the North American and Singaporean side in their face-off during the group stages. Although they couldn’t qualify for the playoffs, their regular performance at PBIC 2016 has even helped them in getting a slot in the next edition of the event. The team was appreciated by the fellow contestants because of the short time they had for the preparations. When the other professional teams were playing the game for more than four years, the Indian team had the game in their lifestyle for less than six months.
Piercing Blow’s PBIC 2016 was dominated by the home teams, Ozone and Mango – winners and first runners-up respectively – who remained undefeated in their journey all through the tournament. The third place was secured by the Brazilian team 2KILLGaming.
PBIC is held in a different country every year, and the organization is aiming for the time when India will host PBIC in the future. The game, Piercing Blow launched in India 5 month ago. With the current monthly offline tournaments in Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Pune, the team is looking forward to expanding it even further to more cities.
Piercing Blow is on Steam as a Free to Play. It is great to have a new game coming on the scene with lots of new opportunity for anyone who looks forward to taking the game as their competitive career, with monthly tournaments and two international tournaments every year, the game aims to make its space in the mainstream competitive events very soon.
You can follow Piercing Blow’s Indian team on their social networks or visit their website for frequent updates on the development of the game.
Mountain Dew announced DewArena Gaming Championship announced the launch of their new variant GameFuel in New Delhi on 9th June. In their partnership with ESL India,
DewArena was announced with a massive prize-pool of over ₹ 8,00,000 will be split between different games. The online qualifiers drove four teams to the top of CS: GO tables which are invited to the DewArena LAN finals.
Top four teams will make their way to the LAN finals.
Team Brutality
MxB
Overcome
Invisible Wings
The action begins on 23rd of September where the semi-finals will be played on the teams. The grand finals will be played on 25th.
It is Team Overcome who stood strong at the ESWC India qualifiers by beating the favorites Entity Blue in an extraordinary 2-0 fashion (16-6 de_cache, 16-4 cobblestone). They will be flying to Paris in the next month to compete at Paris Games Week.
In the total of a potential 60 rounds game, Team Overcome allowed Entity Blue to only win 10 rounds in total! Both the maps of the game were clinched comfortably by Team Overcome leaving no margin for errors. When Brutality were knocked out early in the tournament it looked like an upset, but Team Overcome double-confirmed their dominance in the tournament by beating two of the legendary Counter-Strike squads in India.
ESWC India finals
Entity Blue were looking pretty confident after their win over Destructive 5 after being down 1-16 in the second map of the second semi-finals. Team Overcome, which came into the finals by beating Team Brutality were looking confident than ever entering into the grand finals. It seemed as they were waiting for this overwhelming opportunity to be called as one of the best teams in India. Ironically, Team Overcome were unable to qualify for the DewArena LAN finals in the regular ways and were only qualified for the event only after Invictus pulled out of the tournament.
ESWC made its return to India after a year gap this year, each year Paris Games Week hosts Electronic Sports World Championship which features multiple games of different genres. The Paris Games Week will begin on 27th of October and will run until 31st.
Entity Blue beat Destructive 5 (2-1) at the semi-finals of ESWC India, they will face Team Overcome in the grand finals today. The winner of the game will have an opportunity to represent India at the Paris Games Week happening later this year.
The second leg of semifinals started on cobblestone with Invisible Wings (Entity Blue) on the CT side after winning the knife round. Entity Blue started off well leading the first, second and third round with Mithil and psy taking responsibility to clear things off. D5 though, quickly coming back into the game by getting the first gun round in their favor but failed to grab the next one.
Even after losing a complete buy round, D5 came back all the way forcing it up to a 5-4 scoreline by winning five straight rounds in a row. Entity Blue’s psy did manage to respond back not once but thrice with two, three and another two frags in consecutive rounds securing the rounds in their favor. The game ended in the second half pretty comfortably with Entity Blue winning the map 16-11. The second map of the semi-finals which was rather an odd pick, de_nuke started with Entity Blue on the terrorist side getting only a single round in the whole of a first half.
Team D5 after winning the second map
Unexpectedly to the scores, Entity Blue went ahead to grab only a single round in the second map of the second semi-finals. Destructive 5 completely destroying Entity Blue to make their way into the third and the decider map. The score ended with a decimated 16-1 scoreline in Nuke.
The third and final map of the game, Cache started with Entity Blue losing the pistol round but quickly coming back into the game with the next two rounds. The game progressed with D5 being on the positive as they led the first set of the gun rounds but Entity Blue, never late to the game were able to equalize the scores at 7-7, the first half closed at 8-7 in the favor of EB. The second half was a dominant affair for Entity Blue as they swiftly and firmly crawled to unlevel the scores at 12-8. They extended their lead even further by winning another couple of rounds muscling their scores on 13-8. They confirmed their victory at 16-8 scoreline.
The semifinals ended with the scoreline going Entity Blue (2-0) against D5, who looked promising earlier in the matchup.
Entity Blue will face Team Overcome at the grand finals of ESWC India qualifiers, where the winner gets a chance to travel all the way to Paris to compete with the professionals.
Team Overcome has advanced to the grand finals of ESWC India qualifiers by beating Team Brutality 2-0 in the first leg of semi-finals. They will play in the finals against the winner of the second semis between Invisible Wings and D5.
In the first semi-finals of the ESWC India qualifiers, Team Overcome was drawn to play against Team Brutality whereas, Invisible Wings was scheduled with Destructive 5 (also known as semperX). The first game of the day started on De_dust2 where Team Overcome beat Brutality 16-8 in comfort, nothing seemed wrong in terms of the gameplay instead, Brutality was completely outplayed.
Apparently, the second map was driven with the same force when Team Overcome drifted their way to close the first half of the second map Cobblestone 12-3 in their favor. All thanks to astarrr in the first and second round wherein he managed to grab 7 kills and resisted his team to get knocked out of the tournament. Team Brutality slowly got crawled their way back into the game but were yet again denied by Team Overcome, and the game was put to an end at 16-11 in the second map.
Team Overcome will face the winners of the second semi-finals which is scheduled next, where Invisible Wings plays Destructive 5. The winners of this qualifiers will be offered a full-covered trip to Paris where they’ll represent India at the Paris Games Week.
Team Invictus is already at the venue, parallel to this Zowie exTREMESLAND brackets are also unveiled. The $100,000 LAN festival will feature 16 teams placed into four different groups, the matches begin from 22nd of September.
The group stages will commence on 22nd of September where Invictus will be playing against All Gamers in their first matchup. Two from each group will advance into the playoffs of the Zowie eXTREMESLAND.
Zowie eXTREMESLAND brackets
Date
Timings / IST
Matches
Groups
Teams
22.09.2016
11:00 AM / 08:30 AM
Match 1
Group A
MongolZ vs MVP Karnal
22.09.2016
11:00 AM / 08:30 AM
Match 2
Group A
Risky Gaming vs Dream[s]cape
22.09.2016
12:30 PM / 10:00 AM
Match 3
Group B
New4 vs MVP Project
22.09.2016
12:30 PM / 10:00 AM
Match 4
Group B
Invictus vs All.Gamers
22.09.2016
14:00 PM / 11:00 AM
Match 5
Group C
Renegades vs EHOME
22.09.2016
14:00 PM / 11:00 AM
Match 6
Group C
NXL vs Rascal Jester
22.09.2016
15:30 PM / 01:00 PM
Match 7
Group D
VG,CyberZen vs Rebellion
22.09.2016
15:30 PM / 01:00 PM
Match 8
Group D
GOGOMYTEAM vs MiTH
23.09.2016
10:00 AM
Match 9 / LB
Group A
LM1 vs LM2
23.09.2016
10:00 AM
Match 10 / LB
Group B
LM3 vs LM4
The event will follow double-elimination seeding system. The matches will be played on 22nd and 23rd of September of the group stages whereas, the playoffs will be subjected to 25th. We wish Team Invictus the very best for their journey in Shanghai, China. Do follow this space for extensive coverage of Zowie Extremesland!
